Beth Agar A2 Music Video: Michael Jackson (Unfinished)

Early Pop Videos with Jackson 5.
“Rockin Robin” 1971

Basic video – promoting song

Limited sophistication

Lip synching

“Rock with You” 1979

Him singing

Interest is costuming and the use of light in the video

“Billy Jean” 1982

· First interesting Pop Video that tells a story and does more than just Lip Synching.

"Beat it" 1983

Tells a story.

Elaborate choreographing at end sequence.

“Thriller” 1983

• The music video is considered the most famous music video of all time, at least by the Library of Congress, which added it to its National Film Registry in 2009, the first music video in their registry.

The video was a cultural milestone introducing:

• elaborate choreography

• costumes and dialogue

• the concept of the long-form music video, where a mini-movie was made for a song, then edited down for the short version.

• The long version of "Thriller" runs nearly 14 minutes, but had remarkable longevity, easily racking up over 100 million views when it showed up on YouTube. MTV usually ran the short version, which ran a little under five minutes but still contained about a minute of non-song content in a storyline that omits most of the movie the couple is watching at the beginning.

• The video cost about $500,000 to make.

• Jackson's record company had no intention of paying for it, since the album was on the downswing and they had already financed videos for two of its songs.

• According to John Landis (Director), Jackson really wanted to turn into a monster, so he offered to pay for the clip himself. Landis took on the project because he saw it as a way to revive the short film genre, which he loved.

• Jackson didn't have to pay for the video out of pocket because they made deals with Showtime and MTV to cover the costs. Showtime got to air a one hour special with the "making of" documentary and the 14-minute film before it was broadcast anywhere else.

• When MTV heard about this, their executive Bob Pittman decided that losing a Michael Jackson video to Showtime was unacceptable, and paid $250,000 for the exclusive broadcast rights once Showtime's window ended. MTV was founded on the principle of not paying for videos, so Pittman got around this by paying for the documentary, even though the money was really used to pay for the film.

• The video won for Best Performance Video, Best Choreography, and Viewers Choice at the first MTV Video Music Awards in 1984.

• With its famous graveyard dance, the video started the trend of group dance scenes in Pop videos.

• The video owes a debt to Alice Cooper, who in 1975 created a movie based on the stage show for his "Welcome to My Noghtmare" tour. Cooper's production was based on an entire album, but it also used a horror theme and was narrated by Vincent Price.

•       Most homes had Video Cassette Recorders in 1983 and sales of videos were big business.

•       You could buy a VHS or beta copy of Michael Jackson's Thriller, which included the full video and also "The Making of Michael Jackson's Thriller," a behind the scenes documentary.

•       This tape became the bestselling music video at the time, and was later certified by Guinness World Records as the top selling music video of all time, moving 9 million units.
The timing helped, as the video was released a few weeks before Christmas.