80s Music Videos Revolutionized Video Production »

Its amazing to watch the progression in technology when you watch the music videos from the 1980's. In the early 80's, around 1980 when MTV first started the production value was extremely low and within a matter of 3 years you see a vast improvement in video quality.

Videos like The Buggles "Video Killed the Radio Star" or Kim Wilde "Kids in America", Devo "Through Being Cool", anything from 1980 to 1983, the video looks grainy and the effects are very low budget.

From 1983 to 1985 you see the video quality improve, better editing, better story lines, much better effects. As the music video industry expanded and every artist had to make a video or disappear into obscurity, the videos became better and better quality. Lionel Richie, for example, an artist who's career began in the 1970's with the Commodores, was able to preserve and expand his career by promoting all his hits through music videos on MTV.

Other video programs sprung up such as Night Flight on USA Network that sometimes featured offbeat

By the late 1980s, videos had evolved into a very high quality art. Artists propelled to super stardom by MTV such as Madonna, Depeche Mode, Culture Club, Billy Idol, U2 had budgets for videos that would have been unthinkable in 1980.

I dont have any figures, but I wonder how much of the technology that enhanced the video production for television, commercials, consumer video camera improvements was driven by the way that MTV took over in the 1980's.

For people living in that time, we watched everything from commercials, movies and television transform to follow MTV style edits and cuts, effects, camera angles and more to jump on the bandwagon of this exciting new thing that was happening in video led by MTV.

In the 90s it was the rise of computers, but in the 80s it was definitely video technology that was opening our minds to new possibilities and allowing artists to create beauty in new ways that a whole new generation could enjoy. There is not much evidence of this cultural transformation nowadays. MTV's programming went from music videos 24 hours a day to lame game shows, reality shows and other non video programming. There was a time though, when MTV ruled the entire "cool" world.

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