Music Videos

Long before Dick Clark, Dire Straits or Nirvana’s apocalyptic pep rally, music and video have enjoyed a fruitful and protracted courtship. As far back as the early 1900s, music proved an essential component of so-called “silent films” such as Edwin Porter’s seminal 9-minute film The Great Train Robbery. Theater houses screening silent films employed in-house organists who provided improvisational accompaniment during the feature’s presentation; the visuals told audiences what was happening, while the music subtly told them how to feel.

MTV, arriving on the scene in 1981, turned this relationship on its head, as music videos brought the visual medium to bear on otherwise self-sufficient tunes. Commerce has inevitably sullied music videos’ virgin creative ethic, but there remains plenty of artistically vital work being accomplished daily in the medium. We’ve interviewed several experts in various aspects of the field to learn more about the commercial and artistic facets of contemporary music video.

Roman Coppola:
On Underground Music Video
& The Conceptual Journey
Born in Paris while his father was filming there, Roman Coppola grew up around film. He has directed videos for The Strokes, Phoenix, Daft Punk and many others, earning himself a reputation for producing some of the most fascinating conceptual videos in today’s industry. I wanted to hear him discuss his approach to conceptualizing a video project, as well as discuss the promising work he sees going on today.

PASTE: You’ve been immersed in the film industry since early childhood. At what point did you get interested in music video?

RC: My first job was working on my dad’s film, Dracula, shot in ’91. It was around the exact time that MTV was enjoying its moment. It’s had various moments over the years but it had a particular moment in the early ’90s, coinciding with Nirvana and the new pop culture that was happening. Videos were a big part of that and it became a very exciting field that everyone wanted to get into. Having done the 2nd Unit Direction for Dracula, I was able to make a reel, and then I made a video with my own band just for fun. I did the videos for the Presidents of the United States of America, my little moment in which I made a name for myself. Then from there I was able to have some notoriety.

PASTE: What encouraging trends do you see happening in contemporary music video?

RC: There’s a lot of good work that’s happening, especially in the lower-budget areas, which usually demand more creativity. The problem is that MTV generally plays very few videos and tends to be less adventurous than it used to be with breaking new artists or trying something that isn’t likely to become a hit. So there’s just not a lot of encouragement. I’ve done many, many, many videos that most people have never seen. In the past I could expect to turn on MTV and see a video that either a colleague did or that I might have done, and it was a part of your day or your week; you were aware of what was going on and felt like you were participating in this thing. Now it’s just very seldom that you see something very stimulating.

So videos have gone underground, it seems. But the biggest problem is that the music industry is freaking out because they’re in a big transitional moment and there’s basically no money to put into videos so everything’s very cheap. You never do videos for money, because it’s never been very profitable, even when it was in its prime. There just aren’t a lot of resources. It’s kind of discouraging.

PASTE: So what makes a successful video?

RC: What’s unique about a video as opposed to a lot of other forms of media—and it’s true with commercials as well—is that a video is usually designed to be played again and again and again. When it’s a hit, they play it even more. So the biggest creative dilemma for a director is: how can you make something that continues to be interesting? So that when it comes on the third, fourth, ½fth, 20th time, you’re excited to see it again. Or if you’re with a friend and they haven’t seen it, you’re like, “Oh my God, you haven’t seen it? You have to see it.” That’s easier said than done. Generally I’ve found something that seems to work is destruction, some kind of violent surprise. I did that with “Peaches” for The Presidents and with Green Day with all these exploding things, and I’ve done that several other times. That’s one technique or device. But in general, some element of surprise or payoff—it’s gratifying, so you’re excited to see it again.

PASTE: Walk me through your process for approaching a new video project.

RC: Well, it depends. Sometimes you get an idea right off the bat, a clear notion of what you want to do, and sometimes it takes a lot of gut-wrenching stress to find an idea. But generally when I hear “so-and-so wants to do a video, they’ll send you the song tomorrow,” my brain starts working: “OK, it’s The White Stripes, or The Strokes, or whatever it is, so whatever Strokes-y type ideas might be there. Sometimes when I hear the song it starts to lock you in a little bit. You listen to the music and it conjures up some sort of vibe. Then you listen to the music and you start to pick up little clues. I try to not get too literal with the lyrics or analyze what the song is about. You just go more with the vibe or the spirit that it invokes. There’s no real process beyond that, just try to keep an open mind and sometimes you free-associate. Maybe it reminds you of the jungle. Whatever it is, you just let your mind free-associate. And generally finding contrasts, something I’ve relied on in my work. Have you seen the video I shot for Imarobot, by any chance?

PASTE: No, what was the concept?

RC: I did it a year ago. It’s for a band called Imarobot, their song “Dynamite.” In that video, it begins in a punk rock club and then all of a sudden there’s a weird mushroom fantasyland. When I first heard the song, it had this ’80s punk band energy, so I thought, “I see them in a night club,” but that’s too obvious. That’s a dumb video to just have them in a dirty night club. And then I thought, “Oh, it’d be cool to first have them in a dirty night club then, all of a sudden, the walls break open and they’re in a weird psychedelic wonderland.” Sometimes you use an obvious idea or something that’s right there, but then you try to twist it around and find some kind of contrast that’s unexpected.

Coppola lives in Southern California and has a number of entrepreneurial projects underway. You can ½nd out about them on his website (www.romancoppolastudio.com). He is also the co-founder of a production company called The Directors Bureau (www.thedirectorsbureau.com).

Cathy Pellow:
On Empty-V and Music Videos’
Next Glimmering Hope
Cathy Pellow is the owner of Refused TV—a band management company and a production company that produces music videos for bands such as Franz Ferdinand, The Killers and Hoobastank. Given her extended history of dealing with MTV and smaller upstart video channels, we were confident she could give us a sense of where various music video outlets stand at the close of 2004.

PASTE: How would you describe MTV’s effect on the consumption of music today?

CP: What started as a great ally to the music industry has actually contributed to the destruction of the record industry because what it’s done is created the need to have a visual accoutrement to music. This has resulted in a “no old guy” policy—if you’re not hot, young and sexy, your visual presentation is not desired. Unfortunately not all great musicians are young and sexy. But now radio and most other forms of media attention are rooted in whether you are on the MTV outlets. It’s this incestuous thing, and as a result it’s stripping away the lifespan and quality of artists and bands. Just look at R.E.M.—once an MTV darling, but they can’t get on anymore. Madonna can’t even get on MTV; once you’re old, you’re simply not allowed. But MTV still wields this enormous amount of power in record sales, exposure and promotion that didn’t exist before music television.

The old path a band followed to success involved hard work and radio—you toured and did your thing. Now all you have to do is get your video on MTV and you can get a platinum record. But, again, you’ve got to be hot, young and sexy. And you’ve probably gotta lip-sync. It’s a reality that’s been created by MTV. Now they don’t even play videos, but the system they created is still in place. Radio’s not saying, “Hey, since MTV only plays five videos a week, maybe we should stop paying attention to their playlist.”

PASTE: Can you think of a point in MTV’s evolution where this slide really began? Was there a watershed moment or did it just happen gradually over time?

CP: Well, you started to see the power of MTV pretty early on. Obviously, in the case of pop music, it worked really well. But there are other examples of the power of the channel. MTV embraced grunge; that’s how people found out about it. If MTV hadn’t existed, Nirvana wouldn’t necessarily have been the most famous band to come out of the Seattle scene. They definitely weren’t the ones the Seattle scene was talking about the most, but they were younger and I guess more willing than, let’s say, Pavement. They just happened to be the first of those bands to be singled out by MTV, and whoever gets their attention first wins.

It’s very simple: In order to make money, MTV has to be able to show advertisers that the videos they’re playing sell a lot of product. Everything is based on numerics and statistics, and that’s what has ruined both commercial radio and MTV; you used to have DJs and VJs who could pick music to play—now it is all playlists made by the corporation. There is no room for soul, or intuition or instinct.

It seems nowadays that the only people left working there with a love for music and creativity are the kids making the promos, which is really still the most creative part of MTV left these days. You see the interstitial commercials for MTV and they’re genius. You’re like, “God, those poor kids must be just sitting there like, ‘I work at MTV and I gotta sit and do this, knowing it’ll air sandwiched between a damn hip-hop big-cars-and-booty video.’” I seriously doubt that’s what these kids listen to. But, still, some really, really talented directors got their start on MTV. It was the original playground for the most creative directors back in the day.

PASTE: So what is MTV’s relationship with new music?

CP: Case in point, I manage a band; they have a great video. They’re on a major label. The band is getting the most amazing critical acclaim, great reviews, but MTV has 75 new videos submitted to them the same week. We are trying to get added, and they are only going to pick one or two. So they pick Eminem or 50 Cent. They aren’t going to go out on a limb and get rid of a popular artist for an unknown, even though it deserves to be shown.” And that’s a real problem. It’s why music is so stagnant now. Not enough new is allowed to get through.

PASTE: So, for bands and labels who don’t have any hope of appearing on MTV, what options does that leave?

CP: In the case of the band I manage, whose label could not get them on Fuse or MTV, they’re still #4 on the Rock Alternative CVC chart this month because we hired an indie video producer named Andy Gesner at HIP Video and he goes out and promotes the band and the video to all the interstitial markets that air shows that play videos just like what you’d see on Fuse TV. There are all these regional shows that people are watching because they want to see videos they can’t see anywhere else. They actually want to watch an hour of TV and see videos instead of commercials and the occasional Real World marathon.

So, yeah, there are a lot of new channels still utilizing videos, which is why people are still making them, but they’re making them much less expensively. Labels are saying, “Since we have a one-in-a-million chance of getting on MTV, why should we spend what used to normally be around $300K to make a video that might only end up being seen on the Internet or on regional video shows.” As a result, videos budgets have shrunk so much it’s now normal to be sent a track of a known artist on a major label with a video budget of anywhere from $35K to $150K. That is a new trend that is really bankrupting the music video production companies.

PASTE: Do any of the emerging video channels have any hope of competing on the same level as MTV?

CP: Fuse is beginning to challenge MTV, but it is still in admittedly far fewer homes. But Fuse is playing videos more, and its success sends a message that people still like music videos and hopefully it causes others to start their own video shows. Right now I’m about to start shopping Refused TV to network or big cable again to get it back on the air. Now, when you watch Refused TV you are going to learn about new music and get a taste of great import music you didn’t get to hear about before. “New music with no agenda” is the slogan. If I like a video by an unsigned band that’s really better than the rest of what’s out there, I am going to show it. No agenda. It just has to be good.

Overall, I think people are interested in hearing new music. They want to see great videos by great bands; they want to be educated and informed. They’re not going to find out about a new band by turning on a Clear Channel radio station. They’ll just find out about more generic rock. It seems like only the band names are different these days, but not the music, it’s just the same thing over and over. I want to have a video show that holds music to a higher standard. So if channels like MTV and Fuse make people like me get off my ass to actually create better music programming, then I guess that’s the glimmer of hope.

But, you know, I’m grateful to MTV in the end because it really is responsible for creating one of the most wonderful art forms in my eyes. I love music and I love film, and I just look forward to the day when it comes back around to how it was in the beginning where provocative ideas and images can accompany and enhance the music. One day I believe with the whole satellite and HBO-style cable, we will have music programming that will not be “Pepsi”-driven but will be honest again and if, I have my way, I’ll be part of that movement.

(You can visit Refused TV on the web at www.refused.tv)

Friedlander:
On the Process of
Making a Music Video

1. I Listen To It
I get a track of music that is usually sent to me because the record label thinks I’m good for it or because my rep thought I’d be good for it. So either way it’s been sought out either from my end or the record company or artist’s end.

2. If I Like it, I Start To Write
If I like it, I start to write on it. Sometimes there’s a brief. For instance, Ashlee Simpson wanted to have a dual personality concept in the video for her song “Shadow.” Sometimes your brief says: we just want performance, no story. And sometimes there’s nothing: we’re just looking for a good idea; we have no idea what we want.

Then I write. And again sometimes there are two other people, sometimes there are 10 other people writing, it depends. We’re given rough information: vaguely how much money they want to spend, where they want to shoot, some other factors that help you tailor the treatment. Then I usually write a treatment and wait to hear back.

If the band and the label like the treatment, we go from there and start prepping. Prepping involves scouting locations, casting, hiring a crew-director of photography, stylist, production designer. You prep and you prep. Hopefully you get a chance to talk to the artist beforehand because even when artists say they don’t have any ideas, you’re dealing with extremely creative people—musicians and songwriters—and they always do. You just need to get in a room with them. And a lot of times they have good ideas because who knows the song better than they do?

3. And Then You Shoot
Typically these days I’ll shoot for about two 14-hour days or so. You shoot and hopefully you get what you need.

And then afterwards you take the video from film to tape, where you do the color correction. That’s where you set the look and that’s a process that’s pretty unique to videos and commercials, which is why they look so much different than movies. That’s why they have such a unique color or contrast.

4. And Then You Edit…
and send the edit out for approval; you usually have changes. An artist will say, “I don’t like this shot of me,” “I don’t want this,” “Can you cut this faster?” You make changes and then you conform the video and that would be the time when you would do all your visual effects as well.

5. And Then You Deliver
You hope that everyone’s happy and you hope that MTV adds it into rotation.”

Liz Friedlander attended UCLA film school and began working on music videos in the late ’80s. Her video for Michelle Branch’s “Everywhere” won a 2002 MTV Video Music Award, but she’s also directed videos for everyone from U2 to Dido.