Early on in Michael Jackson's music career in the Jackson 5 the main focus was to spread his music and his videos had no story or theme, it was mainly focusing on the group. Songs like "Rockin' Robin" featured the members of the band more dominantly than any plot in the video.
As this is one of Michaels early songs he had not yet formed a proper image on his own, and his entire 'gimmick' was his family band. Despite being the Jackson 5's frontman and most popular member, the 'funky' image didn't stick to him later on in his life.
Later on in his career after becoming a solo artist he decided to remake himself with his own image, with one of his earliest examples of this being 'Beat It'. This is one example of the beginning of Jackson's popular image featuring his well known red jacket. This is also an early example of his image of a "bad boy"that ripples throughout the rest of his music career. This red jacket also appears in other music videos, most notably and famously in his biggest hit 'Thriller'.
Thriller was greatly influential as a music video, as it was the first to introduce: Elaborate choreography, costumes and dialogue, and the concept of a long-form music video, whereby the video extends the length of the song. It cost over $500,000, yet the music company refused to pay for it all themselves as his album containing Thriller was on a downfall. Jackson was so passionate about his desired scenes that he offered to pay for their production himself, which the majority of the public would see as a wide investment once the video came out. However, MTV and Showtime paid for the video in order to broadcast it on their channels. Showtime also gained access to an hour long documentary making the video, but MTV later bought the exclusive rights to broadcast the documentary. The music video found such success that it was released on VHS Cassettes and broadcast in film theatres as a short film.
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