In case you haven’t checked out the latest issue of Wired, they snuck in a little article (also available online) about music videos coming back into relevance thanks to the internet and the work of some talented directors. The article was penned by Jake Swearingen who picked the brains of directors like Keith Schofield and Cat Solen as well as pundits like yours truly to try and get a feel for the new music video landscape. Now that the article hit the streets we turned the tables on Jake to pick his brain about music video, mainstream media, and how YouTube can be a game-changer and yet still bite.
James (Shots Ring Out): You don’t live inside the music video niche world that most people who talk about music video tend to. What drew your attention to music video once again?
Jake (Wired): I initially pitched something else, a look at musicians getting record deals via YouTube. So like Ronald Jenkees, Esmee Denters, Andy McKee, or the monks of the Heiligenkreuz Abbey. After some back and forth with an editor at Wired, it turned into a round up of music video directors changing the game, helping bring videos back in the age of YouTube. Which was right about when I started poking around and found your essay on the music video, and decided to see if you’d talk to me, because I realized I didn’t know much (i.e. jackshit) about what was going on with music videos.
James: Thats interesting: most people find that essay to a bit pessimistic about the state of the music video as we know it, but you contacted me with a much more sanguine mindset and thesis. In what way do you feel music video made a “comeback”?
Jake: I’m not sure if comeback is the right word, but it definitely feels like music videos have become more of a part of the cultural conversation again in way they weren’t for a while. And this is mainly due to the fact that nearly every single music video past or present is now on YouTube.
James: Do you think the music video is now the internet’s adopted child. Is the music video now the exclusive medium of youtube?
Jake: If you mean that YouTube is the only place to see music videos, maybe, but only for a moment. Something like Hulu, possibly Hulu itself, will supplant it very soon. YouTube’s quality bites, and once a service rises up that can deliver higher-quality video with the same ease of use, a lot of stuff will migrate to that. Or maybe YouTube will be able to up the ante. If you mean is the Internet the dominant medium of the music video, yeah, but that seems to be the future for most creative output outside of major motion pictures.
James: Do you feel like YouTube is giving music videos an outlet or is it just a convenient format to throw up on a service begging for content? Is the horse pulling the cart or is the cart pushing the horse? Does it matter?
Jake: I don’t know how it used to work, but it certainly seems to allow for much smaller bands and directors to get their stuff seen much easier. I can go online and watch a pretty well-made video for a band like No Age, who have tons of critical heat but not much in record sales. They would never have gotten airplay in the ’80s or ’90s.
All the music video directors I spoke to are for the most part very happy with being able to use it. I mean, they’re not in love with the quality – Cat Solen had a line about “YouTube making the whole population go blind in five years.” But they like that their stuff is out there for anyone to see whenever they want.
To use a longer version of a Rik Cordero quote that we used in the article: “When I started getting into the Hip Hop video scene the only outlet for non mainstream or mixtape video content were the street DVDs like Smack or The Come Up. These were really amazing marketing tools for that time but had a limited reach since they were available at specialty shops or mixtape sites. YouTube connected the dots and we just ran with it like purse snatchers.”
I don’t think YouTube is hurting for content. There’s gotta be like four thousand different videos of people hurting themselves on trampolines alone. I’m sure YouTube is happy for the high page views really successful videos bring in, but music video directors need YouTube much more than YouTube needs music videos. If tomorrow morning, God forbid, every music video in the world were to disappear, YouTube would be fine. If every Internet video site were to go up in smoke, I think music videos and music video directors would be would be in a bad way.
Does that matter? I mean, it would be great if all content creators, whether they make music videos or make music or write or whatever, could be able to have a seat at the table with distributors and negotiate fair compensation for their efforts. Content doesn’t just come from nowhere, and people who create it should be paid when others make money off that content. What should be done and what will be done are usually vastly different things, though.
James: Fair compensation on the internet is certainly a problem, something that goes far beyond music video or even music itself, but that’s a whole other article and interview. Back to music video specifically, having surveyed a bit of the “new” music video landscape, what kind of global trends have you noticed? In speaking with some of these directors did any common themes emerge? What kind of forest do you see developing from the trees?
Jake: All of the directors I talked to had different POVs, I think. Keith Schofield seemed pretty sanguine about where music videos were going, Vincent Moon has this idea of creating a online documentary community that will change the world, Rik Cordero is aggressively pushing into feature film work, Cat Solen is pissed because the business model is deeply broken, Mathew Cullen was interested in geeking out about technical details, and I barely managed to get Morisset on email, so I don’t know much about what he’s up to. It’s hard for me to talk about global trends.
All of them acknowledge online is the new distribution platform. All of them seem to really love putting sound and image together in a compelling way. Beyond that, I think they all diverge pretty rapidly.
James: I think you’re hitting on more of theme than you realize with the divergence. I definitely get a sense of “I’m just doing what I can” combined with “I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to be doing” from the scene, collectively, and it’s making for some interesting results. What kind of interest did Wired have in an article about music videos? Was it a hard sell?
Jake: Oh boy, you’d have to ask the editors at Wired. It was their idea to focus on music video directors. They seemed to like the article. Beyond that I have no idea.
James: I’d imagine their angle is internet distribution bringing music video into “their” domain, but as you pointed out earlier pretty most things will soon follow “I’m on the internet therefore I am” and things will needed to be divided up based on content just like in TV and print. Speaking of TV, do you think MTV has any real relevance to music video anymore, or are they a youth-centric channel that just happens to incorporate music videos every now and then?
Jake: It’s way too easy to bag on MTV, but let’s do it some more. The Disney Channel has more relevance for music than MTV does now. That said, the sense that somehow MTV has abdicated its holy duty to show three- to five-minute long music videos is just a holdover from what a certain generation of pop culture addicts grew up with.
MTV is cable channel attempting to sell advertising inventory. I’m sure the execs at MTV can point to a raft of market research data showing that they make absolutely bucketloads more money airing The Hills rather than 120 Minutes. I don’t blame them – I’m just glad there’s been something else to spring up to take over after they’ve decided it’s not profitable to show videos anymore.
James: Yeah, I don’t think anybody out there with half a mind truly questions why MTV in particular makes the choices they do, but I guess the question is why those choices are more profitable than the “better, more artistic” choice of celebrating music and music video. My best guess is at has something to do with the youth culture zeitgeist. I’m of the opinion that music video in the early 80’s was a cultural milestone in that it combined two pre-existing cultural phenomenon: music and television. Video games represent a more recent cultural phenomenon and music based video games have recently exploded. Where once a kid might hear a song for the first time by watching MTV now they are hearing a song for the first time by playing Madden or Guitar Hero. Are these games the current generation’s “music videos”?
Jake: Perhaps. Certainly Guitar Hero and Rock Band can get significant exposure for both mainstream and more underground artists. Activision boss Bobby Kotick just said recently that labels should be paying them to include songs on Guitar Hero, and he may be right. (Also, the experience of hearing a song while playing Madden ‘09 versus trying to keep up with a song on drums in Rock Band is vastly different, so I’m not sure you can conflate the two.)
More interesting to me is the ability for Guitar Hero World Tour users to create their own songs using the video game and the plastic controllers, or Jonathan Mak’s Everyday Shooter, where the player is kinda making the music by playing the game.
Out of all the directors I talked to, Vincent Morisset is the most innovative, and that’s just because his Flash apps aren’t even music videos anymore. Mogwai’s Happy Songs For Happy People had a feature included on the CD where you could remix the tracks for “Hunted By a Freak” on this crappy little PC app. I think something like that, combined with Morisset’s slick visuals, could be the next iteration of the music video. Less than a video game, but more than just passively absorbing image and sound.
James: Yeah, I feel “interaction” is the next big thing, but the form it takes is still up in the air. So, finallly, what’s your favorite all-time video… which one just sticks out for whatever reason?
Smashing Pumpkins, “1979.” Really well-done video, and also came out right when I was about to become a teenager. I had it recorded to VHS so I could watch it again and again. It’s a romantic vision of suburban ennui and dissatisfaction that’s always stuck with me. Even now it stirs up a weird admixture of sadness and envy and nostalgia that remains compelling enough that I had to stop myself from watching it too many times while writing this article. Also, somewhat surprisingly, this is Rik Cordero’s favorite video as well.
(Thanks to Jake once again for his time and for being a cool cat.)
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