Distribution Killed the Video Star
Above is a video for the song Oceans by Rob Dickinson ((This post has nothing to do with Mr. Dickinson’s music or the actual content of the video. The music is not my cup of tea, so it’s probably for the best. Clever use of a cellphone, though.)). It’s an embedded YouTube video and for all intents and purposes, this video looks as good as any others you might find out there. This, however, highlights a deceptively huge problem:
This video was made with a cellphone ((Nokia N93 to be exact)).
“What’s wrong with that?” you may ask. “It’s kind of cool that they used a cellphone to do it” you may say. I agree, it’s very clever. It’s also very, very scary. Why? Because you didn’t notice until I told you.
We’re at the point where the distribution method of music videos is complete and utter shit. This distribution method is Google’s YouTube (and its various dopplegangers). While YouTube has many attractive qualities ((I realize YouTube is great for smaller bands/directors to get exposure on the cheap. This post merely points out the costs of communicating an art form almost exclusively through less than ideal means.)), quaility itself is not one of them. It’s convenient to just hit a button in a post and watch some video. Internet newbies grow a nice stiff one at the thought that their blogger/myspace/facebook page can have video embedded. So awesome, bro! A million wretched MySpace pages can attest to everybody’s love of embedded streaming video.
Music videos are a commercial art form, and while many people focus on that first part (commercial) many people like to neglect that last part (art). The music video art form is primarily seen via an incredibly broken, dusty, painted, kaliedascope of a lens.
What if paintings could only be observed as 250 x 250 jpegs? What if your favorite band only sold their albums as 22 Kbs mp3s? You’d be pissed, that’s what. The reason is simple: the distribution quality would be detracting from the artistic integrity of work. You may not notice a song is great because you couldn’t tell from the shitty recording. You wouldn’t be able to notice the subtle nuance and brushwork that makes a painting jump from pretty good to brilliant.
This analogy extends to video, especially music video. Sure, a lot of music video direction is framing and pacing: things that come across as well in a crappy YouTube file as they would on HDNET. But everything else, everything, is compromised. The use of empty space is all but negated when that empty space is full of a bunch of fluctuating compression pixels. Vision is lost. Subtle expression is lost. Personality is lost.
Pay a lot of attention to that last bit, record labels, as it shows how this is not just a problem for music video nerds. The subtle emotion that an artist exudes, the very thing that defines their personality and thus defines their charm and money-making ability, may be lost. The polish and shine you paid all that money for gets thrown right out the window when I see it in a compressed 320 x 240 box.
This distribution method is making your artists look bad.
The people truly getting screwed in this equation are the music video directors. I know you guys work hard to very little success. I know it’s David vs. Goliath. I know you don’t have much control over the distribution of your own work. While I know you’re happy that many are seeing your work, I know you’re not happy about how people are seeing it. What should you do about it?
Do what you can.
A large part of why this site exists is to be a part of the solution, not the problem. We fight tooth and nail to get high quality representations of your work on our site. We really do, but we shouldn’t have to. Music video releases have devolved to the point that Stereogum embedding a YouTube on their page IS the release. The entire release; the only thing anybody ever sees. Embedded YouTube. Sure, the system says what can and can’t be released and in what form, but a) this is a broken system, and b) we’re outside this system.
Record Labels like YouTube because it’s streaming and thus can’t be downloaded. There are two problems with this: 1) This is false logic and anybody with half a brain and the ability to type words into google can find out how to download a YouTube video in two minutes. 2) What is the big problem with people actively downloading the video you made to promote your artist? Isn’t this exactly what you want? What happens is that people download anyway but they just download a really crappy version or they don’t download at all and your artist never makes it onto their hard drive. You WANT to be on their hard drive and on their mind… this is what drives sales. Why are you fighting the very promotion you paid for? And then we have the practice of record labels taking down YouTube videos. This is equivalent to advertisers getting free commercials on television and bitching about it. It makes no sense whatsoever.
Let me break down how the system should be working using this very site as an example. Look how everybody wins when the quality and integrity of the work are maintained.
Directors: we would like nothing more than to show off your work in the highest quality that is financially feasible. You do good work, we show off your good work, you get more work. Hooray.
Production Houses: Ditto. Your people do good work and people who do good work will want to work for you. Making the work you do look good is a large part of this.
Record Labels: We want you to be able to promote your artists in a way that allows their full message and image to come across, not a garbled, distorted, fuzzy image that nobody can make out. People see and hear your artists in an attractive, appealing fashion. This appeal leads to people liking your artists, which then leads to record sales.
Bands: We want your work and the work of the director you chose to visually complement it to look and sound its best. Period. This results in more fans and thus more sales, which are the two things that make what you do worthwhile and financially viable.
Sadly, the trend is toward decreasing the quality of distribution which can only lead to a decrease in the quality of production. 30Frames has already discussed rapidly shrinking budgets in the music video world. If the current distribution method is allowing things to be done via cell phone without anybody noticing, which direction do you think that budget is going to go in the future? Are you going to get nice equipment and special effects? No, you’re going to be given a few cell phones and $50 and just have to deal. That’s the death of an art form right there. Let’s keep it alive.
If you would like your work featured on SRO you can reach us (anonymously if necessary) via our contact page.
UPDATE: The perpetually awesome 30frames has a response/follow-up post to mine. He has a few counterpoints, but we seem to largely be on the same page.
Nice article and its points ring true to me.
One of my mate just bought Becks album because he liked Cellphones Dead a song he only heard as i’ve been showing the vid to anyone who moves as i love it
(Score 5: Insightful!)
Some responses here:
http://videos.antville.org/stories/1512129/
I agree mostly as well. I’m an aspiring director myself and, when I really think about it, the state of music videos is depressing. But, currently in Israel, I’ve noticed a few different music video channels including MTV Europe and MTV2 that ACTUALLY PLAY MUSIC VIDEOS and it’s refreshing to see all kinds of music and videos making it into people’s homes. I think, and have thought for a while, that the major problem with the “distribution” of music videos as you state is solely in the U.S…which is unfortunate for us. I really believe that MTV is solely responsible for the decline in the art of the music video in that they just don’t show them anymore. When they’re not showing reality shows, they’re showing 30 sec clips of big budget videos, therefore all the audience gets to see is Beyonce and Kanye West, etc… (nothing wrong with them or their videos, but you get my meaning) What is a record label suppose to do with a video these days other than post it on YouTube or sites like it? I just recently found this site and will be coming back often and I also hope to one day have a video of mine here and critiqued and trashed and so on, because I take it seriously. I’m writing too much…
The video you put is interesting. Not because it was made w/ a cellphone, but because the directing sucks (and the song too, btw). When all you do are juxtaposing annoying fixed shots, yes, there’s no difference between a cellphone and a XLR-HD-Whatever camera.
I agree with a lot of things on your article. I’m amazed when I see how badly YouTube compresses the video when competitors (DailyMotion and others) have much better quality. But that’s not the point.
Yep, it may be bad for good directors who used to work on another media. but each media had its talents, and some people can direct some beautiful things BECAUSE it’s meant to be boradcasted on YouTube and iPos and so on…
That’s what we try to do at Blogotheque w/ our Take Away Shows. My director, Vincent Moon, shoots his videos thinking they’re gonna be seen on a small screen. And I like it (of course, I know…). The most beautiful thing he did wasn’t made for La Blogotheque. It’s a video for a guy called Barzin. It’s amazing. and guess what… it’s soon gonna be on Stereogum
(I’m french, sorry sor the clumsiness)
little counterpoint to this: http://videos.antville.org/stories/1513016/
[...] «Музыкальный видеоклип как жанр искусства умирает» – утверждает видеоблог Shots Ring Out, рассказывая про видеоклипы, снятые «на халяву» на мобильные телефоны, критикуя качество видео на YouTube и ссылаясь на стремительными темпами сокращающиеся бюджеты, выделяемые рекорд-компаниями на съемки видео – что, по его мнению, приведёт (и уже приводит, если вспомнить про Криса Каннингема) к массовому оттоку «топовых» режиссеров видеоклипов «из бизнеса» по причине потери ими интереса к клипам как адекватному средству творческого самовыражения. Но “инсайдерский” блог 30 Frames, уже упоминавшийся нами на прошлой неделе, спорит с ним, утверждая, что нет, это не жанр умирает – это черта, за которой его ждёт перерождение, потому что, во-первых, прогресс не стоит на месте, и технологии интернет-видео будут все совершенствоваться и совершенствоваться, а во-вторых, потому что уже сейчас видеоклипы начали сами по себе становиться товаром, продающимся, например, в музыкальном интернет-магазине iTunes, а где есть пользующийся спросом товар – там будет и конкурентная борьба. [...]
Some good points. But so long as the target demigraphic is 12 years olds with cellphones ….. well, duh!
Nowadays I just get my boot on anyhow. The whole entertainment bubble is bursting (or at the very least convulsing) which means people will take even less risk, which means even more bland shit being pumped out. To 12 year olds with cellphones.
A little back story and response…
As somebody who’s primary job has devolved into finding higher-quality quicktime versions of YouTube videos, this whole rant had been brewing in the back of my head for quite a while. Then that new Gwen Stefani video came out and was only available via YouTube. I felt I would have some interesting things to say about it (and what it represented), so I set out to do a post/review for this site. Being connected to a super-major label act, I knew nobody would be sending us a quicktime so I went about the largely futile motions of contacting the label and produciton house, etc. ((The lengths to which labels make it impossible for the free promotion of their promotional videos on sites like this is the subject of a completely separate rant)). Anyway, I start watching the YouTube video to write my review/post while I crossed my fingers and hoped that a higher quality file will present itself.
After three repeat viewings I realized I couldn’t do it. The YouTube video just looked too horrible: I couldn’t even tell what facial expression Gwen Stefani was making in all but the most extreme close-ups, the dancers were just jumping blobs, the costume design was mostly impenetrable. I realized that my saying even one critical word about this video would be completely unfair to Sophie Muller as I would largely be judging guesses and assumptions I was making about what I should be seeing based on the pixelated blobs I actually was seeing.
At that moment I realized I couldn’t even write about the video I also realized how frustrating it must be to actually make the video knowing this is what people would see. I realized that if I was a director, I wouldn’t even bother will all those little details because nobody would ever see them. I was thinking like a tech-savvy and distribution-savvy music video director and the conclusions I was coming to were scary.
Thus, “Distribution Killed the Video Star”. If I had never seen Gwen Stefani before and my first exposure was her YouTube video, whatever charisma and charm she has that allows her to sell millions of records would have been completely lost on me. The distribution method of the video was canceling out its own promotional properties.
My thoughts ignited a lot of (awesome) commentary from our readers and various interweb inhabitants. While some commented here, a much larger contingnent of music video folk offered their thoughts on Antville:
http://videos.antville.org/stories/1512129/
30frames offered his take as well:
http://30frames.blogspot.com/ (it’s down the page a bit. 30frames needs some permalink love).
Below I respond to some thoughts and counterpoints from all three arenas.
30frames: 1) Picture quality is not everything. 2) Technology will advance and fix this.
1) No question that directors and us music video nerds probably take very subtle details like film grain way too seriously and that little johnny YouTube could care less. However, if it was really just that I wouldn’t have bothered writing this thing. See my above comments about Gwen Stefani’s face: I couldn’t tell what facial expression she was making. Hell, if I didn’t know who or what a “Gwen” was beforehand I probably wouldn’t have been able to figure out her gender for half the video (those emo boys and their make-up have made things a lot harder). And that lip-synch thing is a god-awful annoyance I forget to bring up.
2) 30frames and others point out that my issue will largely take care of itself as technology marches on and streaming video quality improves. Yes, of course. But this solution is the false idol of the internet age. If the march of technology is the answer to all our problems, and technology ALWAYS marches on, will anything actually get fixed? By that, I mean for every problem the march of technology fixes, it creates many more. Things being better “soon” is a cheap excuse because we never know how soon and at what cost. The reality is that *right now* music videos are communicated at 15 fps with shitty compression on some random blog. What effect does this really have on music video artists? When you realize how your work is going to be seen, it’s hard to stomach even the relatively low cost of a nice 24fps DV camera, let alone high end film or HD equipment. The insanity is that saying “Fuck it, let’s just shoot it on a cell phone” is a completely reasonable tactic right now. This is not how artists should be forced to think.
Chryde: Directing style allows the video to work; directors can find purpose in YouTube.
Good point that part of the reason this video pulls off what it does because it uses very simple, static shots. I think music video directors directing FOR YouTube is inevitable, smart in the short-term, but scary in the long-term.
Progosk: Sufjan Fisher-Price Spec video
Thanks for the dedication! I’m currently searching for a Fisher Price PXL 2000 Pixel-vision on eBay. Great find.
In all seriousness, there’s a difference between shooting with sub-par tools because it fits your desired look and shooting with sub-par tools because horrible compression hides the fact that you did. Has somebody done a video by using one of those 3D viewfinder things from the 80’s? If not, that’s my idea… you heard it here first.
WinchandPulley: Are you out of your mind? (AKA YouTube is a great idea)
This wasn’t about whether YouTube is a bad idea in concept. As I stated, the ability to reach many at almost no cost is an astounding quality. The point was that this distribution comes at a price, and that price is making your music video look like shit and setting bad budgetary examples for labels and production houses. This is not an either/or proposition.
And YouTube videos are not really “all in one place” in any real sense. They are scattered around embedded in blogs everywhere. Searching YouTube for a video is no more or less efficient than searching Google for the same video. It’s not like you can visit YouTube everyday and keep up with all the latest videos… there’s too many and there’s not real organization or quality filtering to it.
Musicvideosyay: disposable cameras did not kill photography
Gather all world-renowed photographers into one room. Now tell them that no matter what, every picture they ever take for the rest of their lives will only be publicly visible as a 250 x 250 highly compressed jpeg. Online, in print, in museum: all the with that same jpeg. See how that goes over with them. While a few would make do, I think by and large a lot of the great visionaries just wouldn’t bother and would move onto green pastures (painting or film or something). When you dissuade all the great voices of your art form from actually working in that art form you have just killed your art form.
The analogy doesn’t work because disposable cameras are much more optional to photography than YouTube is to Music Videos. Disposable cameras gave music videos to the masses but they did not mean professionals had to stop working in high quality. YouTube is changing the music video game for *everybody*.
Kevathens and Coady: McLuhan relevancy
I’d say he’s relevant, definitely. I’m not sure if McLuhan would be happy with “The compression algorithm is the message (or massage)”, but let us assume so
I’m not necessarily anti YouTube (there is a lot to like about their model), I’m just wary about the adverse affects it is having while we all wait for things to get better. My real fear is that YouTube will kill music videos (by killing their artistic integrity) before it has a chance to save them (when the quality improves and artists actually have room to breath once again). Hopefully music videos can hold on long enough…
In the end, I never did write about that Gwen video.
Thanks to 30f, and all SRO and antvillian commenters: you guys keep me going.
in a similar vein, re: photojournalism
The Demise of the Professional Photojournalist
Here are some of my thoughts.
http://30frames.blogspot.com/2006/12/tecnology-to-future.html
[...] Shots Ring Out decries the rise of YouTube as a music video medium: The subtle emotion that an artist exudes, the very thing that defines their personality and thus defines their charm and money-making ability, may be lost. The polish and shine you paid all that money for gets thrown right out the window when I see it in a compressed 320 x 240 box. [...]
Here are a couple of other videos shot on cell phones. It is becoming a huge trend. These are both amazing videos!
cut and paste these links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5YTBuBLL9k
and
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6860582151771625638&q=jym davis
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