This is a style of music video that really needs to be mentioned even though it's only a cousin of the classic music video. The musicians
do such a great job at selling their sound with their look that people find out
about them through YouTube. It makes a musician more accessible to their
audience and makes them seem like real people. Well, that's because they usually are real people. This method is successful
because not only do the high quality videos do well, but the audience would just
as quickly click on a video of someone singing through their webcam at their
laptop. The first band I associate with this style of video production is Pomplamoose. Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn's band name is a play on the french word for grapefruit. In June 2008, the band starting making VideoSongs. A VideoSong is defined by Pomplamoose in most of their about sections in the downbars of their videos as "a new medium with two rules: 1. What you see is what you hear (no lip-syncing for instruments or voice).2. If you hear it, at some point you see it (no hidden sounds)."
How well does this self made technique work? Well, Nataly Dawn is currently touring around the country to promote her new album being released by Nonesuch Records. Nonesuch is the label created by Iron & Wine. Pomplamoose also collaborated and toured with Ben Folds. One of my other favorite self-made musicians is KNOWER, better known as Louis Cole and Genevieve Artadi. They have a VHS/standard definition/3D graphics visual aesthetic that matches their sound. I found out about KNOWER when they were introduced to me by Pomplamoose.
Julia Nunes is a really charming vocalist and instrumentalist who also worked with Ben Folds. Other than her stunning voice, Julia can definitely be deemed one of those responsible for the ukulele trend that became popular a few years ago because of YouTube. Molly Ringwald once said on Good Morning America that she started playing ukulele after watching videos of Julia. Julia's also collaborated with Ben Kweller.
The most successful YouTube-made band actually pulled on the fame of another musical group by covering one of their songs. First Aid Kit are Swedish sisters Johanna and Kiara Söderberg. While I love First Aid Kit's original work, their cover of Fleet Foxes' "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song" will always be my favorite work of the duet. Johanna and Kiara use bold country twang harmonies to create a pretty original sound. They have extended far beyond their cover work and are now promoting their 2012 album release and just announced a tour with Conor Oberst.
Do you want to be a famous musician? Acquire the success yourself. Upload a video.
The presence of the internet has completely restructured the possibilities of creating a music video. Now one can exist and make choices within a simulation. It's basically playing a videogame for the length of one song.
My first experience with this concept was with a Doritos-sponsored video experience called Hotel 626. This website is no longer up and running, and it actually isn't a music video at all because it has nothing to do with music. But when I saw the music videos/websites I'll mention in this post, I always categorized Hotel 626 into the same genre of project.
Anyway, Hotel 626 was a website where you "check in" to a hotel online and stay the night there. Before you get past the first screen, the "wallpaper" ripples as a dimensional face screams through the screen. Oh, did I mention the hotel is haunted?
Some of the trials the participant had to overcome was singing a baby to sleep with a lullaby, finding out the pattern to escape the cell, taking a photograph of the scary monster in the pitch black room, picking the right hotel door to get away from the scary thing chasing you down the hallway, and finding the picture of yourself that was taken mysteriously when you didn't know it. In the end, you escape only when you listen to the instructions that you are given when you get a random phone call from the game! All the scary parts sound mundane when written down and described, but believe me, the thought process that went into making this game is awesome. The player never knows what they are expected to do to complete each level, so one just has to try and interact with what then can see. Before each level is a riddle, which is your only instruction.
Here's a video of what it looks like to play the game/website/experience looks like:
The scariest aspect of the whole experience was at midnight on the evening you played the game, you'd get another call saying that Hotel 626 hopes you enjoyed your stay at their establishment. The reason why this Doritos website was successful was all associated with breaking your expectations for the perimeters of the world of the game.
A year or so after this, Arcade Fire released a similar website/experience/music video called The Wilderness Downtown for its song, "We Used to Wait." The Canadian band partnered with Chris Milk and installed an experience only available with HTML5. This piece is a little more like an art-directed instantaneous movie starring you, the viewer. It requires you to type in the address of the home you grew up in. Instead of the screaming wallpaper face from Hotel 626, a flock of dark birds circle around your computer screen. Again, the project creators had to make a movie trailer for the website.
This website is still up and running so please check it out. The reason why it's genius is because the band gives you a completely personal experience bordering on and inspiring memory with a soundtrack made for you. They show you images of the house you grew up in as a person runs through empty, freshly damp streets as the sun sets behind them.
As I watched the video, I realized the person in the gray hoodie is supposed to be me running through my past. And since the past is gone and can never happen again, huge trees burst through your yard and disrupt the experience as more black birds fly overhead. The multiple windows add an interesting choreography to where your eye travels around the screen as well.
I think this is one of my favorite music videos of all time because it really proves the band knows the feeling behind the sounds and lyrics they invented. There is literally a nirvana in their presentation. They also use a video that corresponds directly with the inspiration for the album hinted at in the track titles: urban sprawl, the suburbs, and Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains.
At the very end of the video, you write a letter to your past self in an attempt to "let go" of some unfinished business involving your old house. Is the fact that Arcade Fire almost forces a personal intervention too emotional for you? Well, first realize how much power you just gave a simple website/video over you.
The reason why someone could dislike these types of projects is that most of them ask for personal information about you. I'd be interested to know of any other music video/websites that are made in the same vein as these two projects.
We have something very valuable living as citizens of the United States: the right to freedom of speech. This matter isn't really ever brought up as an argument anymore unless the situation at hand is truly shocking. There is a breed of musician that could belong to any genre, but always incorporates politics and shock value in its work. One such musical act is Mathangi Arulpragasam, more commonly known as M.I.A. Ironically, she isn't American. But I am always hyperaware of my American citizenship when I listen to her music and watch her music videos.
Something I realized with this musical act is that I like her for her identity and music videos more then I like her music by itself. This doesn't discredit her in any way because honestly, this is a large part of being a well known musician in the 21st century. When I think of M.I.A., I think about her personal story more then anything, but there is one director that helped set Maya apart: Romain Gavras. Gavras is a French Greek filmmaker who seems to specialize in shock cinema featuring oppression. Before "Born Free," Gavras worked with Justice for their "Stress" music video.
The pacing on his videos is always fast and the music is the driving force. And no matter what, it seems Gavras and Arulpragasm don't hold back. Violence seems to occur randomly and at any moment after the first minute of the video. In "Born Free," red-haired males are targeted. The is obviously a satire/metaphor for other minorities. M.I.A. is wanting you to wonder, "Why are they hurting redheads? That's so silly and uncalled for." Every time the unmarked SWAT team soldiers perform an action, they seem to do so with extreme force. The video was originally released in late April of 2010. I remember my awesome English teacher/school newspaper supervisor talking to our class about the video before she started teaching that day. A few hours after the video was uploaded to YouTube, it was removed by the Google enterprise. It was the first time I truly witnessed such immediate censorship by a large company in the public eye.
MTV commended them for their video. Reporter James Montgomery eloquently wrote that what really seemed to spark a controversy was "the real parallels, of which there are many: the ongoing issue of immigration in states like Arizona, the treatment of prisoners by U.S. troops at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, and, more universally, the brutal tactics against minorities by government forces all over the world. It's a credit to M.I.A. and Gavras that they don't shy away from any of them: removing the flags from the uniforms of the police officers would have diluted the statement."
One can easily see why M.I.A. isn't afraid to approach such controversial matters. She grew up in a Tamil town in Sri Lanka. Her father was a founder of the activist group EROS. Maya was raised in the Sri Lankan civil war living a life of fear. She hardly saw her father and she experienced oppression from soldiers every day. EROS was affiliated with the LTTE, the rebel group fighting the Sri Lankan military. Living the displaced life of a refugee definitely defines Arulpragasm's music. She started as a video artist in Britain. Her visual style in her videos is still prevalent in all of her work. It's always extremely bright with lots of .gif art.
Gavras worked with M.I.A. again in 2012 for her "Bad Girls" music video. You won't find the shock value in it that's present in most of Gavras' work, but he definitely isn't done with this theme. The same year he worked with Jay-Z and Kanye for their "No Church in the Wild" video.
My point with this blog post is to know the back story of your artists. A lot of them have motivation behind their messages.
This
week, I want to discuss one of the most famous world superstars and the concept
of originality. Beyoncé’s best music video isn’t even in the
classical cast of music video, but instead it takes the form of a live
performance. In 2011, she performed at the Billboard Music Awards before
accepting the Billboard Millennium Award for her fourth album, 4. Beyoncé’s
performance was distinct because of the immense screen behind her. Instead of
just using backup dancers, she also performed parallel to animations on a screen.
The best part was when an army of digital Beyoncés danced with the real one.
You probably know what I’m talking about because Beyoncé used the same
technique for her halftime show performance this year.
Here’s why this performance can be equated with a normal music video: It’s
essentially a site-specific act harmonious with the literary movement of New Historicism. One must understand the
timing context of the performance to truly appreciate the work. Not only is the
video always going to be just a televised performance from an award show, but
Beyoncé/Beyoncé’s team didn’t make up this process of performing in sync with
digital animation. Yahoo News reporter Billy Johnson Jr. describes it pretty clearly:
“The next morning, however, the Internet was flooded with articles
alleging that Beyoncé copied her show concept from Italian pop star Lorella
Cuccarini.
A year earlier, Cuccarini used the same interactive backdrop when
she played an Italian award show.
When Beyoncé and Cuccarini's concerts are played side-by-side, the
comparisons are even more apparent, down to the sequence and illustrations.
In an effort to curb the negative reaction, Beyoncé admitted her show
was patterned after Cuccarini's.
'My makeup artist showed me the
performance of Lorella Cuccarini a year ago, and it inspired me so much,' she said in an interview.”
There’s
nothing insignificant about the true music video Beyoncé and her team created
for “Run the World,” but the skill it takes to really perform live and
have the confidence to do so in this day and age is truly impressive. Beyoncé
is also a truly talented dancer and this performance highlights her skill.
Another
performance video with the same concept is Kagemu's "Black Sun." It's a
collaboration between Japanese artist Nobuyuki Hanabusa
and Katsumi Sakakura. These two (collectively
known as Kagemu) created their rendition of
synchronized dance and animation before Beyoncé and Lorella Cuccarini, so
they are believed to be the originators of this technique. Hanabusa describes
his process for creating the performance as such: "Here is the
process of the movie. First, I shoot the dances and scan the data into a
computer. I analyze the motion of a dancer one frame at a time and lay out my
graphics in an appropriate position. By continuing this process, I create the
animation linked with the dancer."
In the same interview with The Atlantic, Hanabusa was asked to address
the controversy with Beyoncé and Cuccarini.
"I think all creators in the modern world are
influenced by old pieces in some way. In that sense, a purely original piece
does not exist. However, as long as the creators have pride in themselves, I
believe they will pursue a new piece or originality. As one of the creators, I
honestly regret this case and want the world to know that our performance is
the original one."
For more about Kagemu, Beyoncé and the controversy of borrowing
another artist's concept, I suggest you check out the video below and Kagemu's interview with The Creator's Project.
Before I explain anything
about this video, you should just watch it. Keep your mind wide open and try to
figure out what you’re looking at. The only hint you get is that this is a work
by Michel Gondry. So it’d be best if you try and think outside the box as you
try to get it. You probably recognize this name, but to refresh your memory
he’s the French dreamer/director who created Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Be Kind Rewind (2008). Please try and watch the whole video and
don’t look ahead at my post.
Okay so tell me what you saw. You’re on a train, looking out
a window right? Yes, that’s all true, but that’s only the denotation of the
video. The connotation is a beautiful and in depth study on the evolution of
the song. Still confused? Now watch this. Once again try to watch the whole
video and don’t read ahead.
I first saw this film when my good friend, a British
exchange student with enough euphonic knowledge to humble my pretentious high
school music persona in a way I’ve never experienced before, gave me a little
music video lesson via YouTube. I consider this music video to be the best
thing she showed me.
I didn’t understand what I was looking at until I watched
the second “making of” video, so don’t feel bad if you didn’t comprehend. To
finally spell things out in a connotative manner: Gondry mapped out the entire
song into the landscape seen out the window of the train. Re-watch the video
again, and you’ll realize that every water tower, tree, building and smoke
stack are in visual accord with an element of the song. They follow the rhythm
and build in size just like the sound does. It really calls attention to the rhythms and dynamics of the structure
of the song in a beautiful and subtle CGI environment. He used footage he took himself on vacation going from Nimes to Valence. My favorite part is how the lyrics align with the people walking at the train station.
This is what makes great art/movies--the ability to make
something aesthetically pleasing and have a moral motif at every level. One can
find meaning at the deepest degree, or simply enjoy the moving images at a more
insubstantial level. I urge you to explore more of Gondry’s work. His music
videos and feature films are all incredible and I find him to be one of the most
original thinkers of the era. If his style of video intrigued you, be sure to
check out the one Gondry made for Daft Punk’s “Around the World.” Instead of
having the landscape match the music, dancers emulate the rhythms and sound
elements.
The synchronized dancing and women in sparkly swim caps is evocative to old
Bugsby Berkeley numbers.
In the '80s, a company called MTV created the music video. The art of combining music and motion pictures has come a long way since then. Blogger, filmmaker and cellist, Allie Levin, asks you to observe your favorite music videos and re-evaluate how/why one creates images that try to imitate and depict songs.
