http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5YTBuBLL9k

and

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6860582151771625638&q=jym davis

http://30frames.blogspot.com/2006/12/tecnology-to-future.html

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.

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.

(I’m french, sorry sor the clumsiness)