Dreamy documentaries: how the Beatles, the French New Wave, and LSD invented the music video
artwork by Wyatt Warren.
Why are music videos the way they are? Filled with quick cuts timed to the beats, close ups of artists looking directly into the camera, and plots utterly irrelevant to the lyrics. Visual interpretations of the lyrics that are too on the nose. Bright colors, silly energy, and laid-back artists looking as cool as possible. Odd angles and stylistic flourishes that are usually more experimental than the song itself. A style that makes it incredibly clear that what you are viewing is not real, and a broken fourth wall that fills the world of the video with a level of honesty that cannot be found in a traditional film – a dreamy documentary. To understand the origins of this style, we must travel back in time to 1964, the year in which two of the most exciting trends in pop culture of the time converged: the French New Wave and Beatlemania.
A Brief Rundown of the French New Wave
The French New Wave (and its many counterparts in other European countries) emerged in the late 1950s and 1960s. It aimed to shake up the more rigid, classical Hollywood style that had only further entrenched itself into movies post-WWII when European economies and film industries were in ruin.
Well, what is the Classical Hollywood style? One of the core principles of this filmmaking style is that it should not call attention to itself. Editing should be as smooth and seamless as possible in order to fully immerse the audience in the world of the film. Additionally, Hollywood films were expensive, and most were shot on elaborately constructed sets, on massive indoor lots, and starred major celebrities in exploitative contracts with major studios.
The European New Waves railed against all of these tenets. Instead of innocent and purehearted characters, these films were often about criminals and morally gray individuals; classical editing was replaced by faster cuts, jump cuts, more close-ups, voiceovers, repeated shots, and shakier handheld cameras; and finally, films were increasingly shot in real locations rather than on sets, with increased usage of non-actors. Films gained a new level of honesty and self-awareness due to the documentary-influenced techniques, while still getting a lot weirder and more experimental.
It’s Been a Hard Day’s Night!
While the music video wasn’t necessarily invented by the Beatles, it was definitely popularized and elevated by the band. In 1963, the film company United Artists made a three film deal with the Beatles so that they could make tons of money selling soundtrack albums. The films themselves were of secondary concern, which meant A Hard Day’s Night was shot in only six weeks on an extremely low budget (about $4 million, adjusted for inflation). When watching the film, it is clear that the cast and crew were flying by the seat of their pants: literally running from one location to the next, one fast-paced witty one liner after another until everyone is whisked away to whatever scene comes next. The result is a hilarious film significantly better than what anyone could have expected—a hit with both critics and audiences. It is also surprisingly experimental for the time, adopting shooting and editing techniques from emerging art cinema movements across Europe.
In many ways, A Hard Day’s Night is shot like a documentary. It frequently uses (cheaper!) handheld cameras, films in real locations rather than on lots and sets, and features non-actors and unknown actors (including the band members themselves). It also feels like a documentary—the dialogue feels improvised, and because the film is structured as a lead-up to a television performance where the Beatles play themselves, it feels like a behind the scenes video cut together with songs and sketch comedy. It feels like the cameraman follows the action, rather than like the actors are being choreographed to planned camera movements. This realism helped shape the Beatles’ perception in pop culture as laid back, funny, whimsical guys who love to get into little antics and flirt with women. The barrier between the artist and the fan is removed, because the fans get to feel like they know the band, something that was also extremely innovative for the time and probably further fueled Beatlemania (in both box office and album sales).
Of course, the musical sequences are much more heavily choreographed and stylized than the dialogue scenes, with the opening scene of fans chasing after the band members being the most fantastical and expensive. While it is supposed to, in spirit, document Beatlemania as a concept, the actual shots are over-the-top and absurd, making no efforts to mimic any kind of realism. There is no sense of time and place, the boys change costumes and hide in increasingly ridiculous manners, and the catchy title track itself doesn’t actually correspond to what’s going on in the scene.
This absurdist, detached-from-reality style is complemented by the innovative filming and editing techniques employed. There are brief cuts from odd, extreme angles, such as from the ground or from the sky. Shaky, handheld camera footage is not something that would be found in most movies of the past because cameras were too heavy and expensive to lug around the streets. These lighter cameras provided much more freedom to move the camera in unconventional directions. There are plenty of zooms as well. While it might seem normal today, smooth and portable zoom lenses were exciting technology at the time! The band and director Richard Lester clearly had their fingers on the pulse of the art world, seeking to elevate what could have been a mediocre Elvis movie copycat.
“Rain”: No Plot, Just Vibes
In 1966, the Beatles grew sick and tired of touring and performing on various talk shows in order to promote their new music. Instead, to promote their singles “Paperback Writer” and “Rain,” the band went to Chiswick Gardens in London to shoot the first real music videos. I’m going to focus on “Rain,” because both the song and its accompanying visuals are simply more experimental. This video created many of the tropes commonly associated with modern music videos.
Firstly, and most radically, there is clearly no effort to mimic a real, live performance, as is common in so many other rock videos. While there are instruments present, they aren’t plugged in, and it is pretty clear that John and George are mindlessly strumming their unplugged instruments rather than playing the actual notes or chords. Ringo spends the video sitting on a stoop, vibing drumlessly. It is clear that they are not merely trying to substitute a live performance, but want to detach themselves from reality completely and create a new, more surreal and playful in-between space.
Additionally, there is more of an emphasis on the artists looking cool rather than either playing their instruments or telling an actual narrative. This is the M.O. of many contemporary music videos—less story, more cool closeups of the musicians in sunglasses.
The lack of story in exchange for exclusive focus on style makes this video even more out there than the New Wave films it was influenced by. The video is filled with jump cuts, close ups, zooms in and out, elaborate handheld camera work, and even experimentation with placing things (aka Ringo) out of focus. The fact that there is no story in which to ground these experimental shooting and editing techniques allows the music to float around in the abstract, reinforcing its early psychedelic roots. These techniques (paired with John Lennon looking extremely high) bring the audience in on the acid trip in ways that would only be further expanded upon in their later music videos and films.
Regarding the ‘story:’ this video also foreshadows an inevitable cliché of many music videos: not knowing how to balance the line between being too literal and too abstract. For example, when John sings “when the sun shines,” the cameraman literally turns the camera upwards to point it at the sun. These extremely literal shots are just as quintessentially “music video” as the chilled out, quick closeups.
A final note on “Rain”: the video also features some slow zooms and snap zooms on various children in the background of these shots, giving elements of the video an oddly documentary or ‘cinema-verite’ feel to them. The zooms in on the children need to shift into focus, making the camera work feel spontaneous and naturalistic—more of a slice of life that captures the faces of random young children than a psychedelic music video. To me, the reasoning for this is to potentially separate it from the idea of a live, televised performance as much as possible—or perhaps to mimic it, with the live studio audience turning into three or four distracted toddlers (because it's funny). While we are with the Beatles (ha!) in a real-life garden rather than an elaborately constructed TV set, this video feels more dreamy and unreal because it refuses to mimic the live performances that the band had begun to shun by the end of 1966.
“Penny Lane”: A Perfect Marriage of Sight and Sound
The “Penny Lane” music video is a perfect synthesis of the experimental playfulness of both British 60s psychedelia and the French New Wave. It is also a more cinematic film than any of the Beatles’ previous music videos because the visuals and the audio continuously inform each other, creating a more enriched and detailed story than if either component had been left on its own. The songs in A Hard Day’s Night accompany various comedic narrative scenes that aren’t necessarily related to the lyrics of the songs. On the other end of the spectrum, “Rain” and “Paperback Writer” do not have any kind of narrative, just effortlessly cool vibes. “Penny Lane” transcends the band’s previous videos by allowing the visuals to toe the line between literal and abstract (the barbershop spinning cylinder when Paul says “barber,” buses that say “Penny Lane,” but also weird horseback rides and Victorian dinners in the park).
The visuals perfectly match the playful, whimsical, nostalgic, innocent and bittersweet sound of the music itself. The color palette is generally desaturated with splashes of ultra-vibrant reds and greens, making the film look like a flashback to an older and simpler time. Similarly, the song's verses are in B and transition down to A during the chorus, creating a harmonious blend of vibrancy and melancholy.
Like the previous videos, while it is highly stylized, “Penny Lane” also has plenty of shots that look more like a documentary than fiction. The shots of the busy neighborhood streets look like b-roll lifted straight out of reality, and the subtle zooms in on the band members from opposite ends of the street make the camera feel like less of an obstacle and more like a fly on the wall. The closeup tracking shots of John’s inscrutable face with a slightly shaky handheld camera make these scenes feel raw and honest despite being completely absurd.
The video is filled with just as many comedic gags (such as horseback riding past their instruments in the park) as there are nostalgic moments. A great example of this is the point in the music video during which the camera pans from right to left on closeups of the Beatles’ faces as they lip sync gibberish. This unusual choice was actually a result of a musicians’ union policy that imposed additional fees for miming lyrics in videos. This ends up working in the music video’s favor, as it adds another dreamy, psychedelic element. The nonsense lip-syncing makes it seem like there is another conversation going on within the world of the film, counterintuitively making the film more immersive. This song-inside-a-song could also reference the soon-to-be-released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, which is a band-inside-a-band situation.
The combination of absurd, psychedelic nostalgia and documentary-style shooting techniques make the visuals a perfect flashback: a subjective, hazy and impressionistic painting of reality. This perfectly matches the spirit and lyrics of the song itself. The lyrics reference blue skies and pouring rain as though they are happening simultaneously, blurring time and memories together because the feelings of childhood are more important than detailed accuracy. Though they communicate the same idea in different mediums, each element (visual and audio) only grows in beauty and meaning when paired with the other, making this a perfect music video.
The Dreamy Documentary
Music videos borrow tools from a variety of different film genres, movements and styles to create an art form that is oddly homogenous and functions almost nothing like its influences. Film and television (with exceptions!) want to immerse the audience in what is being seen and help them suspend their disbelief. Music videos have entirely different goals – they usually just want to promote the artists and their songs.
Finally, while I can sit around and praise the Beatles all day, I would be doing a disservice to the medium if I didn’t pay tribute to all the artists who nurtured the seeds the band planted. MTV, the television channel that made music videos the standard for artists, originally did not allow black artists’ music videos on their channel. Pressure from Michael Jackson’s label finally forced them to screen “Billie Jean” in 1983. Without Michael Jackson’s pop artistry, cinematic vision, and popularity, music videos would never be where they are today. “Thriller” is a meta, layered, comedic and choreography heavy masterpiece directed by John Landis. It took many of the techniques and conventions employed by the Beatles to new heights. There are endless fourth wall breaks, stories inside stories, and unique direction choices. It also strikes the perfect balance of adding greater context and vision to the lyrics without being too on the nose. It also has tons of dancing, something the Beatles’ videos did not have, and choreography with dozens of backup dancers is now a standard of the medium.
Another pioneer of the genre was Beyoncé. In 2013, without any promotion, Beyoncé dropped her iconic self-titled album, along with interconnected music videos for every song. This album is impressive and influential in so many ways – she changed the day of the week that artists release music from Tuesday to Friday! She kept the recording (and filming) of this album so secret that no one knew it was coming, and it still debuted at #1 and sold over 5 million copies! Her pioneering of the elaborate and cinematic visual album forced artists to up their game when it came to music video production. The music videos and songs were conceptualized simultaneously, which made each element, audio and visual, stronger as a result. This album is also deeply personal for Beyoncé. It is a staged, choreographed, and edited recreation of real events and feelings in her personal life–so, a dreamy documentary.
From their whimsically experimental roots with the Beatles to the cinematic vision of later classics like “Thriller” and “Telephone,” music videos have embodied this idea of a dreamy documentary: allusions to realism while doing weird things, and winking at the audience to remind them that nothing is real. Strawberry fields forever!
edited by Eric Harwood & Sha Frasier, Editor-in-Chief.
artwork by Wyatt Warren.