30frames

The business side of the music industry has been getting heavy coverage the past few days. From Britney’s video adventures with the vertical brass cylinder, to Radiohead’s groundbreaking (groundbreaking, I say!) new strategy and Madonna’s new school all-in-one deal with Live Nation. There has been plenty of hype, but …

The Britney thing? Next.

Radiohead and Madonna are intriguing because these are about new ways of music getting distributed and money being made off the music, tours and celebrity fragrances. The self produced digital-only record is definitely the direction of DIY music careers and I also think that (at least on some level) Madonna and Live Nation (LN) represent the way that “labels” will look in the future.

I have no idea how these experiments are going to work and remember that no one else does either. No matter how many orders Radiohead got the first day or how sure someone is that Madonna took LN to the cleaners – these are massive, complicated deals that cannot be classified as successes or failures for years to come. What they are, for now, is a new direction – and that is exciting.

I am always one to be skeptical of hype, a side effect of being in the hype business. Both Radiohead and LN employed the power of the press release to perfection these last weeks. They got massive coverage for their new ventures, with very little outlay for newspaper or TV ads. Free press is great and there has been lots of it over the past few weeks.

That being said, we all need to take a chill pill. Remember the iPhone launch? That was madness. Surely the world was about to end. My favorite story from then was the Mayor of Philly getting caught camping out on line (what, no assistant?!?) to get a glorious world-changing cellular thing-a-ma-jig. Well, time has passed and many people have an iPhone, more don’t – the world continues to spin. The cell phone marketplace is different, but no one in that industry thinks it is all sorted out yet. That is where we are with the “game changing” Radiohead and Madonna deals, it is still very early.

These new ideas are intriguing but you know who they work for? Established megastars. Say again – established acts with massive pre-existing fame.

The Madonna deal is all about concerts and other merchandise – so that kind of thing could work great for Dave Matthews or the Eagles – not so much for Talib Kweli or Kelly Clarkson. The Radiohead model of self releasing (heh, heh – self releasing) on-line might work for Linkin Park, but probably not for a new act.

These strategies are a refreshing change from the tired label group-think, but they are (at least so far) strange new directions that don’t really apply to most of the music industry. Selling your own record on your website happens all the time already (though the “name your own price” part is kinda new) and by and large no one cares.

All kinds of acts you have never heard of are already doing things very similar to what Radiohead is trying with this. Thousands of bands sell their music for nearly nothing on-line 24/7 – so why is it a big story now? Not because the strategy is so new, but because a very, very famous band is doing it. This is actually not a story about a “bold new direction” for the record industry, it is a story about a beloved band and their music that everyone is eager to hear.

The Madonna signing with LN is similar – not all that new. The deal that 19 Management strikes with the American Idol finalists is similar (I believe) regarding the sharing of various income streams, though the dollar values are much, much lower for Ruben Studdard and Fantasia than they are for Madonna.

Radiohead and Madonna are doing something new-ish – but what happens with their experiments is largely meaningless for the real future of the record industry. Maybe if Madonna cleans up then John Mellencamp and Mary J Blige may want/get similar arrangements – but what happens when all the famous musicians are gone?

U2 and Usher could find audiences releasing their own “digital only” recordings – but even if it works perfectly, what does that mean to a new band no one has heard of?

Everyone that can truly benefit from these deals (at least in a way I can imagine in the present day marketplace) is already super-ultra-mega-famous. Only the most established and renowned artists need apply.

Telling a new band or a newbie singer that self-releasing and all-in-one manage-labels are the future – is like telling a poor family struggling on food stamps that they need to make money – by purchasing an apartment building. Buying a nice six-unit building IS a good investment – but you need to already have a big bundle of cash to even make it into that game. Your friend’s band who plays down at the corner bar/roller-rink/basement is probably struggling to afford a twelver of beer. The idea of owning rental properties as a “solution” is pure fantasy land for them.

These “new strategies” are great things to try, especially if you are already wealthy from the old strategies of the traditional record label. Without the backing of Capitol, can Radiohead get every major newspaper to write about their website? People are eager to hear Radiohead’s new music because Thom Yorke is very talented AND because their “old” label invested lots and lots of money to make that talent into fame. Capitol got rich too, far richer that the band ever did off Yorke’s songs – but ask Radiohead if they want to start again at zero without major label support.

Like people that remember V-J Day, the artists that were made super-stars by the old label powers will die out and slip into unimportance. Can these new business models make stars, or just profit off and enrich existing ones?

What happens when all the famous musicians are gone?

Labels: Britney Spears, celebrity, death, insider, label, Madonna, music video, Radiohead, u2

Gotta love Busta Rhymes getting down like a Senator. No, not in a "wide stance" kind of way but in a "Intranets is a series of tubes" kind of way.

Check out the onsmash clip of Bussa Buss decrying the good ol' days (hey, that's my gig) and remembering the time when he spent millions on recording before "the computer caused that fuck up." Busta is, as always, hilarious and gives voice to the rarely heard "wealthy celebrity" demographic. Plus he is right about them ringtones!

Absorb the knowledge and be prepared for NSFW language.

Labels: Busta Rhymes, celebrity, insider, music video, video link, viral video, YouTube

Just a quick one before the weekend.

When the Esquire article came out in January of 2001 it created a pretty big stir in the music video world. A very high-profile director of the poppiest of kiddie pop videos was revealed as a former pornographer. And not just some soft-core Cinemax stuff, this guy did the hardest, weirdest dirty movies that anyone had seen. Based on that description, can you guess which one of the people at left is the director I am talking about?

The man is Gregory Dark, possessor of perhaps the most varied imdb listing in history. Plus, check out all the pseudonyms!

"There's a whole generation of kids who learned about sex from my f^%&ed-up movies," Gregory Dark says. "A lot of gangster rappers and guys in heavy-metal bands still come up to me and say, 'Gregory Dark, I had my first sexual experience watching New Wave Hookers!' " - Esquire

The Esquire piece is about the troubled shoot for a video starring Leslie Carter and it made me think a few things:

• Almost all videos have some kind of wardrobe/image freak-out.
• The label people were probably not too happy about this article.
• Remember when being related to Nick Carter could get a music career jump-started?

Anyway, read the article and watch the pop-a-licious video.

Labels: celebrity, controversy, music video, on the set, YouTube

No one likes to hear bad news. I certainly don’t. But few people care about bringing me bad news. They just go right ahead and lay out all the stuff I don’t wanna know. Why? Because I am not famous.

When musicians start being called ‘artists’ they start getting used to no one telling them anything they don’t want to hear. Labels don’t want to and the managers certainly don’t want to. Artists become like some delicate Byzantine ruler where the servants lavish them with praise and tell them whatever they think the godhead wants to hear.

On videos, this can be a problem. I have worked on jobs where the artist has had notes like “I want a video where you insert me into a classic TV show, like Laverne & Shirley” – two weeks after Spike's famous Buddy Holly hit MTV. Those notes got passed along from the manager to the comissioner to the director because nobody at the label had the balls to say, “Hey, that idea is on MTV right now, we should do something else for your video.” I guess the artist believes that anything inside their head must be theirs.

The artists being self-centered children is no shocker, but the whole structure built up around them reinforcing that stupidity does seem like a problem. Artists often want videos that are way more expensive that the budget the label is giving them will afford. I have worked on jobs where the director and prod co had to discuss all the details of the concept/treatment with the artists, but they could not, under any circumstances, bring up cost or money – because that might upset the delicate Dauphin.

This situation is especially bad with artists who made videos in the “glory days” and they remember three day shoots with techno-cranes, armies of dancers and Thomas Kloss lighting them. Artists often believe they can get ANY celebrity to cameo in their video – just by the power of their own stardom. I was involved in one job where the female artist wanted a particular NBA player (a sketchy-to-impossible “get” under any circumstances) in their clip and didn’t understand why the guy was unavailable, even as the hoopster’s team was engaged in the playoffs.

When the messenger keeps getting killed (or denied entry) the message obviously stops getting through. The artist becomes more and more separated from reality, and I am not just talking Mariah Carey, either. This isolation in a cocoon of illusory perfection is especially funny when the artist is a rapper who goes on about his street toughness and un-revoke-able ghetto pass – all while demanding a bigger wardrobe budget so he can keep the fur coat wardrobe is supplying for the clip.

This is not always the case. I have heard (unconfirmed rumor alert) that Andre 3000 often acts as his own wardrobe stylist after hearing how much the label (and by extension Andre himself) was paying for a person to choose the clothes he would wear. Apparently, Mister 3K gets cash from the budget and gets the clothes his own self, with just an PA to handle the returns - and doesn't charge the budget any kind of crazy stylist fee. This is a smart move based on how much $$$ the glam people can be.

The real drama in a video production comes when the DIRECTOR starts to be someone who needs protecting from reality. Part of a successful director’s appeal is their charismatic leadership. This is huge element that young directors often overlook. It is about getting the job and executing the job but a big part of those two elements is making the artist/label/manager feel like they are in good hands. That can mean coming across like a rugged street character to make the rappers respond, an artistic fashionista for the divas or a (just slightly) drugged-up rocker who truly “gets” the band’s brand of stylish desperation.

Music video directors are always playing a bit of a role. They certainly need to act calm on the set and smile to the commissioner – even if they know they just ran out of film or the generator is on fire. They need to act like the artist’s best friend when they are suggesting the beauty close-up would go better without the same, ugly shade of overly harsh lipstick the singer always seems to choose.

The problem comes when the director starts to get just as diva-ish as the talent. Not only does that sour relations with the artists – no star wants competition for the spotlight – it starts to keep the messengers away.

I have worked on lots of jobs where the director simply did not get told certain things. Of course, a good production team keeps silly details off the director’s plate (craft services ran out of peanut M&Ms) while having them focus on what is important. But if the director kills the messenger enough times – the team around him/her will stop bearing even the important bad tidings.

On one shoot the director was setting up a specific performance close-up of the artist, a profile look. The director thought this was a bit of genius to have the artist not staring right into the lens – but someone higher up at the label (who was not on set that day) had told the producer very specifically they did not want ANY profile shots since they believed the performer had a too-large schnozz. The producer is stuck now, since if they tell the director at this point, he will pitch a fit and slow things down while also possibly tipping the fragile ego-ed artist off to the label’s lack of faith in their facial structure. So the producer lets the set-up go forward, wasting everyone’s time on footage that is guaranteed to never make the final edit.

Part of the responsibility for this goes on the producer’s shoulders for not having the guts/skill to communicate with the director – but the majority of the blame lands in the lap of the director who responds so furiously to anyone “questioning his vision” that he has left himself messenger-less.

On that note, I am considering turning off all comments for this blog since I cannot take any more people questioning my vision.

(Just kidding, comments are still on. Post a thought about messenger killing on a job, MV or not, you have worked on.)

Labels: baby director, celebrity, mariah carey, music video, on the set, philosophy, prod co

Euros love the desert. Especially those Commonwealth types from England, Ireland and Welsh-land. The love them some videos in the desert, probably because their local “warm vacation spot” is Brighton.

Every Continental director (and most of the artists) I have worked with has really, really wanted to shoot in the desert outside of LA. They all feel that the song in question (no matter what it is) just sounds like the wide open spaces of the America Southwest. My guess, is that the desert is something they don’t have back home, so when they come here – they think it is a great inspiration to drag the camera crew out to the Mojave, or if you are on a tighter budget, Vasquez Rocks.

It is a cliché in LA-based production circles that if the crew is driving out to the desert in the pre-dawn hours – someone important on the job must have an accent. That is not to say that American artists are immune to the charms of the desert, but it seems to have a special draw to those from across the pond.

I started on a list, but ran out of inspiration. Maybe commenters can add in their suggestions for Euros in the desert videos. The Spice Girls were super-heroines in the desert, Radiohead was quirky, the Lighthouse Family was imminently forgettable and so on. The music actually does point to clips from Sting and the Clash being shot in the desert. U2 used an artificial desert, so that only kind of counts, but they did have that whole album called Joshua Tree. Alanis is Canadian, so she kind of counts. I know I must forgetting a ton of the, Surely Westlife and Robbie Williams have shot videos in the desert.

Of course the flip-side of this is the goofy stuff that US directors and artists always wanna shoot in Europe. Jay-Z had his recent “Hey look at me, I’m in Monaco. No really. Monaco. Check me out” moment for his unretirement. If you were in Paris, where should you shoot your video? Why right in front of the Eiffel Tower, just like Mariah and Usher.

What seems “new and exciting” to the person making the trans-Atlantic flight is guaranteed to make the locals roll their eyes and say “We have to get ANOTHER permit for there.”

Labels: celebrity, jay-z, mariah carey, music video, on the set, robbiew williams, sting, u2, usher, video link, westlife

The Mystery Artist is back, and this time they are multi-talented - fucking shit up as much behind the cameras as in front of it. As always, MA is not Elvis, but that doesn’t mean bedazzled jumpsuits aren’t involved.

MA is a big time mover and shaker – controlling careers and attracting as much attention as the artists who are being sold. Mystery Artist has their own recording career as well, and all the requisite trappings that go with that. But this story is about the behind the scenes “flavor” of MA.

The call goes out for a video for a new artist – signed to the label partially controlled by MA. Several big time directors write on the job, but their concepts end up as budgets too rich for the labels blood. So the video goes out again, this time to younger, hungrier directors. It is also possible that the established video pros kept their budgets real high to factor in the annoyance that they knew would come at the hands of MA, especially on a low-budget, one-day shoot.

The job for the baby artist seems ready to go to one director – but now the budget needs to get whittled down. The label rep was dealing with the prod co and the director – working out the details bit by bit. This is standard procedure, but this budget-trimming job was extra difficult. Every once in a while, the label would suddenly change course – ask for a different set-up within the video, or flipping some other detail that everyone thought was already locked down. It was clear that this was the hand of MA "helping out" and not the harried label commissioner.

The production lost money out of the art department budget. They committed to shooting less film. Mark-ups and profit were negotiated away. All the things that go on in the budget shaving process. Finally, the commissioner and the production team came to an agreement and contracts were signed on the lean and mean budget. The job was finally a go.

The shoot was set for NYC – another “must have” that added to the cost – and as the producer and director traveled to the city, things changed. MA started calling up everyone and asking where all his special riders were. The shoot was located less than ten NYC blocks from the offices of MA’s label – but MA was demanding there be a special RV on the set for their personal use. Rather than take a seven-minute limo ride from the office (where I assume MA has all their luxuries) MA wanted all the standard things that big stars want in their own RV. There was no “extra” cash lying around for MA’s very specific demands of three cases of this kind of imported water and that many bottles of chilled champagne.

Oh, and did I mention that MA is not even in the video. MA does not sing a verse or even make a cameo in the clip. MA just had to be on set to monitor things and MA needed the luxury RV. The commissioner signs an overage to cover these vanity costs – and the shoot hasn’t even begun.

The day of the shoot, things are going okay. Running a bit behind as always but the director and producer are doing their best. By lunch, MA has still not arrived and the vanity RV sits empty burning money as the generator runs and the security stands by to protect the six(6) new, white towels inside.

Finally MA arrives and wants to see all the footage that has been shot. MA watches the playback of the morning’s shoot – delaying the afternoon’s activity. MA demands some wardrobe changes for the real artist in the video – over-ruling the stylist and the artist themselves. The shoot crawls along – with MA an impediment the whole way. The director and producer bite their tongues - this is standard procedure for MA.

Now it is time for the producer to call a wrap on the one-day shoot. It is well after midnight on a dark, NY street and they got almost all the footage they wanted for the day. It wasn’t perfect, but everybody seemed happy. Except MA.

MA wants to keep shooting. The label commissioner tells MA that they simply cannot go over budget. MA says they can go over some, and the commissioner hems and haws – knowing that MA’s super-RV has already blown all their "some" money. The producer and commissioner insist that the shoot will end in just a few minutes. They simply cannot go into overtime for the crew – it would mean thousands and thousands of dollars to go even ten minutes into the next hour. Unless, MA will sign the overage himself. MA will not, but MA will insist the shoot go on.

The producer ignores the craziness, not wanting to kill the project by spending money on OT they don't have. The producer goes to call the wrap and – MA snaps. MA grabs the producer by the arm and makes the kind of violent threats that get people arrested. Seriously, violence is threatened and there are big dudes standing behind MA – making it even more scary. This is well beyond MA being “difficult” – this is criminal. The threats are specific and believable – a very tense and scary moment. MA is right up in the producer's face, telling them that the shoot has to go longer. The producer is scared and doesn’t know what to do. MA has a media-friendly image, but there have also been gun charges and beatings in the past.

Finally some of MA’s reasonable friends get MA to chill out and MA retreats to the RV. The producer and director quickly get a few shots that might satisfy MA, and then they hurry into a production van and get the hell out of there. Sure, they went into over-time – but they feel lucky they escaped with their lives.

Oh, did I mention the producer is a woman? Don’t know why, but that seems to make the threats of MA even more despicable.

Weeks later, the overages for the over-time all get paid promptly, for once. This is the first time in memory that MA’s label has not fought and delayed every payment. The producer finds out that the commissioner hustled all the payments through to keep a lid on MA’s threatening behavior. For once, MA does not have endless notes on the edit.

The video gets edited and delivered. Music television plays it exactly twice.

Labels: celebrity, controversy, music video, mystery artist

Nigel Dick is one of the top-ten music video directors of all time. He understands the business from the perspective of a label video commissioner and as the guy who did clips that ranged from "Hit Me Baby One More Time" to "Welcome to the Jungle."

Apparently Nigel taught some kind of extension class and he has generously posted his lecture notes on his website. Here is a bit where Nigel describes the situation a hot young artist will find themselves in as the do the record industry dance:

The second album has sold five million albums and the band have been on the road around the world for 18 months. They're now headlining and starting to get some serious cash from the gig money but are stunned to discover that the cost of marketing their albums, making videos etc. and the huge debt accrued by their first album only means that after 4 years of hard work there's about $800,000 profit. The manager skims his 20% off the top leaving the five band members with $128,000 each before tax. By the time they've paid tax they've got enough for a holiday, a new Range Rover and the deposit for a condo in the valley. Meanwhile the guy who writes the band's songs is a millionaire.

If you care about music videos, you should definitely spend a few hours poking around on Dick's site. He even has a section devoted to the treatments he has written. Check out how short some of those early GNR concepts were if you are wondering how much things have changed.

New stuff in store for 30frames, so good looking out, graduate.

Labels: celebrity, dick, music video, philosophy

Once again, the photo here represents our Mystery Artist (previous incarnations are here). The MA in question is not Elvis but is very, very famous and not dead. Almighty Spell-Check help me now … Schadenfreude.

A few years back, there was a pop star-slash-actor appearing in a kid-centric feature film. The pop star had begun their career working for the kiddiest of all entertainment enterprises, but this project looked to be MA’s last with the studio.

The movie was wrapped after a long and tabloid plagued shoot. MA had been a problem during the filming but now was MA’s chance to shine – promotion. One thing MA can do, it’s attract attention so the studio, and their record making arm, had contracted a soundtrack with MA performing the lead single and video.

Soundtrack jobs are always hard – there are at least two masters to serve, the label and the film studio. Sometimes the artist is signed to their own label while the film soundtrack is on a different label associated with the studio releasing the feature film. That means three masters. The commissioner involved varies from project to project – sometimes the artist’s label, sometimes the soundtrack label, occasionally even an exec from the film studio.

When concepting a soundtrack video, the treatment first goes through one of the entities. They inevitably say “Don’t worry about those other guys, create an idea that works for us.” That means focusing on the imaging the artist’s label likes if they are the first contact – ignoring the demand for including film footage that will inevitably come from the studio.

MTV now has a rule that no more that 30 seconds of a music video can be footage lifted from a film, in order to force studios to buy commercial airtime to promote their movies. So most soundtrack videos are now created to make the performance and other footage shot for the video “feel’ as much like the movie as possible. The studios want maximum promotion. “Seamless integration” and blah, blah, blah.

On this job, MA was not at all interested in making this music video. I believe they were contractually obligated to do it, but that doesn’t mean MA was happy about it. The money for doing the work of shooting the video was probably rolled into the payment for the film, so it seems likely MA had been paid for this gig 3 or more years earlier when the film was green-lit. That means a cranky and non-cooperative artist.

For the concept, the director was coming up with stuff that would work with the film, but MA would throw their 2-cents in every once in a while with crazy, off-topic ideas. Seriously, MA pitched a video based on magic butterflies when the film had nothing to do with butterflies. AND the MA is not Mariah Carey. That slowed things down, but the film studio finally got their way.

MA felt they were far more mature than the movie. MA didn’t want to be seen in this film at all, I would imagine, even though they no doubt spent the money. The video was one more immature thing that did not fit with MA’s “new” image of sexiness. Why do the young ones always believe that “grown” and “sexy” are exactly the same thing. Is it Chamillionaire’s fault?

The music video shoot was a physically massive undertaking and the prod co rented out an enormous building for the two day production. The building has been used for shoots before and it is gigantic – just at the edge of the 30-mile zone. The production started filling up the space with art-direction and equipment until the day of the shoot and …

MA does not show up. Six hours late and no MA. The director is trying to stay cool and shoot B-roll stuff, but you only need so much of that. The weird thing is …

The movie studio people were actually laughing. They all had experienced so much of MA’s un-professionalism in the past they were actually hoping MA would NOT show up at all. There was a VERY high level exec from the studio arriving and the lower level types wanted the big-wig to realize how difficult MA had been. I guess BigWig simply loooved MA and minutes before the boss type showed up, MA arrived.

MA seemed to have dodged a bullet as they greeted the BigWig like MA had been working hard all day. The label and film producers WANTED this to turn into a blow-up and they got their wish. A few minutes after greeting BigWig and shooting a single performance bit …

MA’s cell phone rings. It is obviously a member of the opposite sex and MA scrambles away from the set – eager to talk to their crush. The BigWig is left with jaw hanging – his impression that MA was a true professional harassed by the press is ruined. BigWig wheels around and the other execs and commissioners have to stifle their smiles and “tsk, tsk” over the behavior of MA.

This giant production, stands idle and many of the people in charge are happy about it. THAT is how bitter they were over the way MA had been acting. Money is being burned like crazy – but they hate MA enough that it seems okay.

After the phone call, MA leaves the set all together because they are feeling ill. (Later than night MA is seen at Concorde, slightly less ill.) The shoot gets shut down after MA leaves. The prod co begs the label types to cancel the second day. Begs them. Everyone knows that MA won’t show the next day, but the label and movie types seem to be reveling in MA screwing everything up so they refuse to cancel the second day.

Day Two. No MA. More b-roll shooting by the director. He gets lots of footage he hops can build his commercial reel. More money burns. They hear from MA – too ill to come to set. Day Two is a complete waste.

The whole production gets pushed to a single day, a week later. That means the prod co and the label have to keep paying for the massive location for the days in between. More money gets burned, but the people paying – movie studio and movie studio record label – are eerily okay with it all.

A week later the video is finally shot. MA shows up on time and the film gets into the can. The video is nowhere near as good as it could have been. But the movie the soundtrack is from ain’t very good either. Lots of money got burned, but that is one job where the label was happy to pay the overages because they got to make their “point” that MA was nuts.

I try not to think of all the cool stuff Chris Milk could do with the money that got wasted.

Anyway, is the MA still a mystery?

Labels: celebrity, media, music video, mystery artist, prod co, selling

The photo here will represent our Mystery Artist (just as it did the first time around) - but rest assured the person in this story was not Elvis. Once again, MA is a male - but next time it could be a female or even a group. The craziest person in the story is not really the artist, but you'll see ...

Several years ago, a project came up with a big-time rapper. The budget was big and they wanted a massive video that would break through the clutter on MTV and definitely get the artist noticed.

Going in, the label person let us know that the concept needed to be a larger than life party, but not stray to far from the raw “street” feel that the rapper had established as his persona. For some reason, we were dealing with a different label person than the commissioner. I’m not sure why the switch, but everyone should have noticed that detail up front.

We pitched a couple rough ideas and the artist responded to a party on a big white yacht. This was actually before “Big Pimpin” so that idea seemed a bit fresher at the time. The big-ness of it also appealed to the artist. At least that is what the label contact told us. We never spoke to the artist (warning sign #2 ignored) but the label person said the artist was completely involved, reading treatments and so on. The Artist was too busy to get on the phone, but he liked the direction we were going. The label person even passed on a few suggestions from the artist that were incorporated into the concept.

The concept started out in LA, but then the shoot shifted to Miami. This added lots to the budget, but the guest artists were gonna be in Miami – so maybe it would work out. We worked and reworked the details – and the shoot was even pushed back after all the details took longer to pull together.

The shoot day rolls around and production is set up on the dock outside Miami. The boat was there and the plan was to shoot some stuff on shore before the MA hit the Atlantic. Our dock was far from the marina – almost making it look like a desert island. Every detail was lined up and shit looked good. The crew polished the big picture yacht while camera department made sure the camera boat was ready to roll. This was a huge shoot with dozens of extras, a crane, two 35mm cameras - the whole nine.

The label person clucked and clucked as the artist was 15 minutes and then 45 minutes late - spinning calls on her cell phone to his handlers. This is not unusual and everyone else remained calm. The amount of money burned by late artists is always a shock to me – even when you expect it going in, it is still surprising to see an artist hamstring his own video by missing a fifth of the shooting day. The guest artist arrives and we get them into make-up while we wait. Anyway, this is all normal, then we see the SUV pull up with, what we assume is, the artist inside.

The SUV stops at the end of the dock, but no one gets out. After a few minutes of presumably staring at the yacht, a single person gets out. This is not the artist. The SUV pulls away as the director and producer go over to talk to this “not the artist” person. The label person was now nowhere in sight, which no one really noticed at that moment.

The producer talks to this person who got out of the SUV. It is the artist's cousin or something and the guy is nervous as hell. The Artist has left and will not be coming back. Apparently, the Artist is deadly afraid of water and boats. Never been on one in his whole life. Never, ever. That’s right – our whole boat concept was worked and re-worked for an artist that absolutely refused to get on a boat.

For a few minutes no one could find the label person who had been our sole contact. All the times the artist had been too busy to talk to the director or producer came rushing back. All the mistakes and BS became evident like the end of The Sixth Sense. We finally talked to the now very unpopular label person and it turns out they had been directing all our creative changes. The artist had heard absolutely nothing about the idea until the morning of the shoot when he had gotten into the SUV and saw the treatment for the first time. No one had told the guy he was going to be on a boat for two days.

The label person had never checked with the artist. They simply told the rapper "don't worry it will be hot" until they realized their error. The label dweeb even kept the knowledge a secret after they found out that morning – not telling anyone and pro-longing the wasted time and money. The shoot got cancelled. The label person was apparently trying to prove how they could do the commissioners job as well as their own – and kept up the facade that the artist was on board (ha, ha – a pun) with the concept.

The label didn’t want to pay the cancellation costs because they believed the prod co was at fault – a belief started by the less than honest label person. After the exec producer threatened to share with the label boss types the messages the non-commissioner person had sent from their Motorola 2-Way (remember those?) pretending that they had been in touch with the yacht-a-phobic artist, the label person realized it was in their best interest to work to get the prod co paid what they were owed.

The artist eventually did a video for the track, at a different prod co that had nothing to do with boats.

Labels: celebrity, music video, mystery artist

The photo here will represent our Mystery Artist - but rest assured the person in this story was not Elvis. Today, MA is a male - but next time it could be a female or even a group. Like the Hero With a Thousand Faces, MA is everywhere.

Back in the late 90s we were working on a concept for a video starring a big-time rapper who was also doing a lot of acting. This was one of the times where the artist had specific wants and the label said we were to help him conceptualize it however he wanted. Anyway, MA wanted the video to be about his journey home from LA to his native NYC to see his wife.

In and of itself this was not necessarily a bad idea,in my opinion, the song was relatively romantic so it seemed to fit. The deal was that MA wanted the journey to be about how he returned home with his car - a high-end Mercedes S600. Okay, you might be thinking, a cross country driving video, right?

No. MA wanted his precious car to be transported by every way other than driving. The video was supposed to star out with the Benzo in the back of a truck, which breaks down and then car ends up inside a freight train car and then is on a boat across the water into NYC where, then and only then, he drives it off the boat to go see his wife.

Okay, that seems a bit elaborate, but MA is paying after all. No one at the label wanted us to talk budgetary concerns with MA so as he would not be offended. We went ahead with this concept - writing the treatment and working out a budget with a multiple day shoot all across the country, renting an S600 and the details of shooting on a moving train, etc. The job has not been awarded yet, and no one has received any money, we are just working on this to see how much it would cost. But the whole time, no one can question the all-mighty MA about the possible expense of the idea so we keep going forward.

The label finally asks us to tell them (not MA) what the cost would be for this cross country jaunt and we come up with a budget over $1 million. The label understandably declines. They finally confront MA about this ridiculous idea and tell him it's not happening. At this moment MA reveals that he doesn't just want us to use any old rented S600 (renting picture cars is standard in videos) MA wants us to use his S600 - AND it is currently wrecked and the production needs to pay to have the pricey bodywork done before the shoot.

The label finally grasped how money-grubbing nuts MA was being and they suddenly stopped calling us. The job that had been a huge priority just up and disappeared. As far as I know, a video was never made for that song.

Labels: celebrity, music video, mystery artist