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On Music Videos
Rob Zywietz
ON MUSIC VIDEOS
Foreword
When a musical composition is played, it manifests itself in the form of sound waves, i.e. only the properties of sound are utilised. Audio waves facilitate and are an inherent property of music and all other sonic artforms.
Other sensory experiences of music, such as the physical presence of a band, the vibrations from the bass, the smell of sweat from the orchestra pit, all undoubtably add to the experience of music, but are nevertheless consciously auxillary to the artwork itself. A human who has lost all his senses, all except hearing, will in theory still be able to fully appreciate music because it is written for audio and played as sound.
In the case of this essay, I am NOT discussing live music performance; what I am concerned with here is the "recorded track" and its role as an artwork first and foremost but also its status as a commodity.
Primarily the purpose of a music video is to make the song playable on an audio-visual platform, such as broadcast television or the internet, thus bringing the song to a wider/different audience. The reason it has to be a video, is because it is the nature of this platform; you can't have an audience sit in front of a blank screen for 4 minutes, albeit listening to a pleasant song. People would change the channel.
Music videos started off as recorded live sessions which were re-run to save the band from having to constantly appear on television (as to wether a band should appear live on television or not, or rather what doing this means for the artform, is another matter). It eventually became an established means of gaining publicity for the song and the band.
Realising the tremendous power of the image, bands began to increase the complexity of their videos and directors were employed to get creative. Eventually this spawned 24-hour music video broadcasting which was simultaenously seen by critics and popular culture as the establishment of a recognisable cultural motif. Everyone knows what a music video is.
But is the music video art? There certainly is a lot of art in it: the graphics, the cinematography, the editing, the choreography, and, of course, the music. So not only is there a lot of art in there, but a lot of artists are also involved. To answer the question of wether a music video is a legitimate artform on a par with the short story or the short film, we firstly have to ask, what does a music video do? And to answer this I have identified different types of music video which I will analyse as part of the bulk of this essay with a view to answer the question.
Videos Featuring the Artist Playing the Song
This is the most basic and honest of music clips, while, without doubt (and with hindsight) the most unimaginative type. Interest could be added by placing the band in unusual settings while the play. At the beginning, though, there was only a gradual move towards using varied camera shots and fast cutting. If the purpose was to produce a film that documents the band playing a song, then thats great, but art it is not. The song may be, but this kind of music video is not. But please keep that Weezer video in mind for later...
Videos Featuring the Artist Doing Something Other than Playing the Song
As bands became brands, they would use the music video to advertise their super bohemian rock and roll lifestyles to their market, who lapped it up like kittens lapping up fresh milk. Often intercut with the previous type of vdeo (thus creating a hybrid type), this type showed the band in unrealistic worlds or "realistic" on the road documentary style clips. Fantasy like this of course comes across as narcassitic, naive, perspectiveless, embarrassing self-promotion. But where does it leave the music video? As a facilitator of image generation, a promotional tool. And while there must certainly be an art, or a science to band and image promotion, the music video itself does not become an art form.
Videos Which Could be Classified as Abstract or Illustrative Interpretations of the Song
The video may take inspiration from the content of the track, for example it may use the same images that appear in the lyrics, or it may use the rhythm of the track as a reference for the editing. Or it may expand on the theme of the song in visual terms. Very often songs are abstract, and it is here in this kind of music video that we witness a lot of "experimental" processes going on. Sometimes, the song has a straightforward narrative which is reflected in the visuals. While it seems that now we could be getting into murky territory as to wether this is art or not, the matter is quite easily dealt with is if you remember that the track was concieved as a complete and wholly self contained piece of art which can fend for itself if need be without its music video sidekick. ANything in this category is admittedly a derivative, however, it is here where the visuals hold a lot of power and influence over what the track is associated with. It can be detremental to the integrity of the song and the artist if his masterpiece will be forever associated with, say, dying babies.
Videos which are Entirely Disconnected from the Track
Let's ignore any cringeworthy hybrids here where the video director must comprimise in his push for something more interesting by allowing the band to squeeze in some egocentric pop shots. On the other hand, often portraiture is in there to keep the association of band and music there and stop anything happening like in type 3. Assuming the director is given free reign, he or she may well go on to shoot a video which is entirely disconnected from the song. Now aside from the association thing already talked about, this kind of video draws attention to the formal relationship between track and video. The track is autonomous, but the video only seems automomous. Upon closer inspection, we find that the video is akin to a short film which could theoretically be viewed as an autonomous piece of art. This may well be, were it not for the fact that the silent short film is unfortunately an artform of the past. Today a silent film has little scope in terms of marketablitly and must therefore join forces with a musical track. And while it seems nice to be able to give the silent film a lease of life through association with a track, it unfortunately defeats the purpose of a silent film through just that association. What happens in this type of video is the simulataneous experience of two separate artforms, thus making this type of music video a non artform just like all the others.
Although not an artform, music Videos cannot be simply dismissed as non-art. As mentioned before, many artistic processes are involved, the music video is a breeding ground for new ideas and many famous filmmakers (who now make proper films) started out making pop promos. Nevertheless it is important for the filmmaker to realise what he is letting himself in for when shooting a video, namely that his visuals will more often than not always be second in priority to the primary artwork (the track), derivative in meaning, commercial in nature. Almost everything in music videos exists at the expense of art.
The "Art" of the Music Video
There is, nevertheless, something about music videos that appeal, especially when they are made well. But if the Music Video is not an art form how can we percieve any kind of quality in them? The things that tend to make the best music videos are, like hinted at above, are those that surpass the parent track in ingeniouty. The less association the visual content has with the content of the track the better, generally speaking. Michel Gondry, Chris Cunnigham and Spike Jones all do this and have become household names becasue of this. I would describe their work as moving graphic design. By fostering their own destinctive visual style, they have stood out from the crowd. They maximised the use of the music video as an experimentation ground.
Another way is by dragging the track into and under the control of the visual track. As way of an example, I became involved in pitching for a music video assignment in which the song in question was a very whiney affair in terms of content and delivery; the band were trying to portray themselves as nice guys, but their lyrics revealed sexual desperation and immaturity - quite the opposite of what they wanted in the video: cool trendy guys being cool with loads of cool chicks. My colleauge and I wrote visuals which would have changed the intended meaning of the song and would have slightly ridiculed the band. We hoped for a sense of a humour, but if you think about it there's a reason why subverting tracks like that never happens. If you can pull this trick off, however, you've got a great music video.
Also you can draw attention to the non-form of the music video. Take the weezer video for exmample where the band perform not only in a fictional world but also in television history, ie in the TV series Happy Days. By taking these conventions and turning them into something self conscious, you can make great music videos. It should be noted, though, that Weezer now hate playing that song from the video because that video was a bigger hit than any of their own music ever was.
How Music Videos Could Potentially Become an Artform After All.
The crucial factor when mixing artforms is balance. Winnie the Pooh books, for example, mix the form of "written language" and the form of "pictures" extremely effectively. They compliment each other while at the same time doing equal amounts of work for the storytelling. You cannot say that the drawings are illustrations in this case, because they do more than just illustrate the text, they are woven into the fabric of the story. It's just not possible to have A.A. Milne without E.H. Shepard and vice versa.
Similarly, the best songs are those that feature a well considered balance between the form of "music" and the form of "lyrics". Now imagine you have a perfectly balanced song as just described, and it took you months to write, months to perfect and make wholly self contained. And then someone comes along and slaps a music video on it so that you can stick it on You Tube. The audience experience the perfect song in an entirely different setting as was originally intended. It's about integrity.
Ideally the musician and the filmmaker (perhaps they are the same person) would sit down together and write a music video. Not write a song, not write a film, but write a music video. You could even use the same elements from a song in a music video, so long as it differed suffiently to suggest that its not a music video for that song. By writing music videos, you would ensure that there remains a balance between the audio track and the visual track and that together they contribute to an inseperable whole, i.e. an artform.
© MMIX