1987

By 1987 the video had enough prestige attached to it that serious film directors were willing to make them, and budgets had reached the point where they could afford serious film directors.

Bad

Michael Jackson's "Bad" was directed by Martin Scorsese, ran to about eighteen minutes in its full version, and was shot partly in a New York subway station. Whatever you make of the result, the fact of it is the point: four years after "Thriller" made the long-form video conceivable, one of the most respected directors alive was making one.

The same period produced videos with genuine cinematographic ambition across the board. U2 were building a visual identity out of American landscape and black and white photography. George Michael was constructing a solo image with enormous deliberation, understanding better than almost anyone that the video was where a pop persona actually got built.

Rock reasserts itself

1987 is also the year the guitars came back into view. Guns N' Roses released Appetite For Destruction, and the visual language that came with it — grainy, dark, deliberately unglamorous, filmed as if the camera had turned up rather than been invited — was a direct rejection of the polished, brightly lit, heavily styled videos that had dominated the middle of the decade.

That is worth noticing because it marks the beginning of the end of the era. The style that had defined the 80s video was now established enough to be reacted against.

What it means for the puzzle

1987 splits into two visual camps and telling them apart is genuinely useful. If the image resolving through the static is dark, grainy, low-contrast and looks like it was shot in an actual room rather than on a set, you are probably in rock territory. If it is bright, clean, controlled and beautifully lit, you are probably in pop. Both are well represented — this year has 39 videos in the catalogue, second only to 1984.

The 1987 videos in WTV

These 39 videos from 1987 appear in the game.

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