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When I was a kid I would (occasionally) shoplift a candy bar from the corner store in my neighborhood. It seemed logical at the time, after all these were adults with a great big store – they would hardly miss my 50-cents, right? Going past that place as a grown-up I marvel that it is still in business. So tiny, so few items for sale and how much effort must those people put in to be open so many hours every day. My perspective on that candy bar theft has clearly changed.

Young directors often see a big production company (and they all look big when you wanna get signed) as their golden ticket. The production company has a cool office, maybe there is even a vintage motorcycle parked in the lobby. To a wannabe Fincher – these people at the prod co must look like they have an endless supply of candy bars.

But … Record labels are truly massive enterprises, huge conglomerates with budgets for executive parking and office redecoration that dwarf even the wildest prod co office spending. No wonder they want to make more off the downloaded iPhone 2.0 songs.

So why would a major label screw with the relatively tiny production company? Because they can, and it saves them some cash. Same reason that an employer waits to hand out the checks to its employees until after the banks close on Friday to garner another night or two of interest before the payroll clears.

When a label hires a production company to make a video for them, the usual deal is that the first fifty percent of the budget gets paid to the prod co when the contract is signed – which seems to happen closer and closer to the actual shoot day, but that is another post. Then the next payment (usually 25%) is due when the first rough cut is delivered to the label. The final portion of the payment is owed to the production company when the final video is delivered along with all the elements (reels of film, video tapes, etc.) If the budget is really tiny the producers may get the entire amount (8 grand or whatever) up front. Makes sense, right?

That brings us to – record labels NOT paying production companies. Sure that first 50% shows up when they want to get the video made. The label knows that locations need to get booked and caterers (and deluxe hotel suites) must be paid for to service the “needs” of artists and label types alike. And the completed video isn’t in their hands, so - at least at this point - the label still needs the production company.

A lot of times that second payment also arrives as scheduled after the rough cut is viewed – after all the label still needs the producer and director to finish the damn video. But, when the video is done (and maybe even already on MTV or BET) – the last 25% seems to come just a bit slower.

The first line of label defense is to claim that they have yet to receive all the elements from the shoot, a provision specifically listed in the contract. In a hurried, complex production it is not surprising that the producers might have forgotten to send off one of the reels of film from the telecine house, or a DAT tape of audio recorded on set, a copy of the third different MTV re-edit or the final close-captioned version of the video that needed to be re-done because the original lyric sheet given by the label was wrong. What if the label acts like it didn’t get one of the legally required elements when it actually did, that would be shady, wouldn’t it?

There are lots of ways that the label can drag and drag their feet about paying that last bit of money. This is not just days, but often months of delays while the production company is getting invoices from vendors and crew members. This is obviously hard on the production company but what can they do?

The prod co can bitch and complain, but they don’t want to anger the label too much – because they are still waiting on the overages to come through. On a video shoot, if the production is going to go over the contracted budget – the label executive on the set can sign a form that they have authorized an overage of a certain amount of dollars to pay for a couple of hours of over-time or a dozen more extras (or bags of substances) as needed.

The problem with overages, at least from the prod co’s perspective, is that those payments are not due as part of the 50/25/25 contracted schedule. The label person (usually commissioner but sometimes another person) that signs doesn’t give over a stack of cash on set – this is just a promissory note, and more up-front spending by the production company.

The overage payments can take forever to come through from the label. I have seen checks arrive more than a year late. Some of this is to protect the label from fraud – they want to triple check to be sure they are not getting scammed by the video's producers (who would do such a thing?). I understand caution from the labels but …

Labels have claimed that the person who signed the overage sheet on set was not authorized to do so, or that the signature was forged. There can be confusion around this potentially pricey decision to spend more money – these overage calls are often made late at night after a long day of arduous shooting. Some prod cos have taken to having the signing of overages done while being video-taped – like a barely legal porn star showing her ID to the camera to be sure there will be no Traci Lords issues.

Adding to the likelihood of long-unpaid overages is the fact that labels are getting tighter and tighter with the budgets during the original planning stages, making it more and more likely that the trimmed and clipped budget won’t cover the actual cost of getting the video made. Everyone knows this going in, and assumes that overages will swoop in to save the financial day.

I have heard (rumor alert) of a label insisting on a certain budget number so the prod co rigged their budget for a seven hour day. All involved knew that the shoot would go more than 12 hours – but putting the ‘real’ cost in the budget would have made the number too high and the upper-level label folks would not have signed off. It seems that the ‘overage’ and ‘budget’ accounting is separate – not sure why it works this way. Doesn’t really make much sense. So a fake starting number is created, and then once the label is ‘pregnant’ with the video – they will have no choice but to sign the overage or face the prospect of a half-finished clip.

Overages are intended (in my amateur opinion) to cover events that happen on the set, so if you need an extra hour of overtime the director can get it and the fact that a couple grand is an ‘overage’ and thus gets paid slightly later is not a big issue. But as more and more of the genuine costs of the video get pushed into the overage category, carrying that debt is harder and harder for the prod cos. It has shifted from ‘putting one nice meal on my credit card’ to ‘paying my rent and utilities with my credit card.’ And this has helped kill off some production companies.

So why do production companies put up with this system? Why not insist on getting the money up front, or something, anything better than the current set-up? Because prod cos are scared and don’t want to lose even one job. Labels like the way the system is, so if one company raises a stink and wants all the cash up front, the label is more than happy to go to a different director at a more malleable prod co.

Many production companies are walking a fine line these days, and getting paid for that hamburger next Tuesday (even if we all know the payment won’t come until Saturday) seems better than selling no hamburgers at all.


Update: Over on the 'Ville, kalstark shares his own tale of woe and owe at the hands of his grateful clients. Check it out here.

Labels: controversy, death, insider, music video, on the set, prod co

Wednesday afternoon the kind folks at Idolator linked to a new blog (so new it really had no posts) that is all about leaking the names of people who leak tracks. I’m pretty sure that this guy posting the names of bloggers who post unauthorized tracks on another blog is not gonna “solve” the music piracy situation – but it is a funny situation.

Many commenters on Idolator and the dude’s blog (which as of today had still outed no one) are freaking out claiming that any such name-leaks are violations of this right or that amendment. Funny how people are all concerned with rights and fair-ness when theirs are at issue and far less so when the “rights” belong to a band who’s music they wanna own. I don’t want to go into all this again but it got me thinking about …

A few years back there was a huge album coming out and the label only sent out CDs with watermarks on them. That is standard now, but this techniques was a bit new then. These were NOT the CDs that were-uncopy-able that only play in old school boom-boxes but rather each disc had the name of the director and prod co that it was given to encoded into the 1s and 0s of the digital file.

I heard the song but never got a disc. The director in question did not get the job but in a few weeks word came down that “his” copy of the song had ended up on the internet. The track had been panned by amateur and pro critics all over and the label was feeling stung so they launched a full-fledged investigation.

A week or so after that I am in the office of the same prod co and there is a Pinkerton agent there. Yes, the strike breaking, Lincoln protecting Pinkertons that even scare Al Swearengen on Deadwood. Unfortunately, the music piracy Pinkerton was not wearing a six gun or swinging an ax-handle. He was just an ex-cop looking guy with a clipboard. He asked a lot of people in the office some questions and then left.

Nothing really became of it, but this has to be the ultimate “analog solution to a digital problem.” I guess the Texas Rangers or Musketeers were not available.

Labels: controversy, download, label, music video, prod co

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

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

This is sort of “part deux” for my preaching to the choir post from last week.

Several commenters here and on antville took me to task for not acknowledging the power YouTube’s “viral video” effect. It is true I neglected to include the upside of video sharing in the last post. I was lazy, the post was already long and I believe viral videos are much, MUCH less infecting than many people believe.

When Gutenberg invented the printing press and movable type – it was decades before someone came up with the idea for page numbers, so those original, un-page numbered books were far less useful than they would be once “book OS technology” had the kinks worked out. Today, we are in that “no page numbers yet” stage for the internet. The technology exists, but the way it will REALLY be used once it becomes fully integrated into our lives has not yet been established. In 2007, the intratubes (and viral video) are still in their pre-adolescent stages and there is no way to know exactly how they will turn out.

Reason #1 why I largely dismiss the power of viral videos:
They have not made anyone on the music-making end of things much money as of yet. The YouTube guys are billionaires, but that hasn’t helped Weird Al make any scratch off of “White and Nerdy” despite the fact that the web clip has been watched more than 6 million times. Clicks are NOT cash. Attention does not pay the bills. (Hey, I love it when my blog gets an extra hundred hits, but I can’t use that to pay my rent, unless my landlord starts taking GoogleAd Sense.)

Part of this is on the music industry. Why can’t record companies turn people sharing video clips into a living for recording artists? Because labels are run in old fashioned ways by old fashioned people. Maybe someone will turn this around, but that looks to be a long ways off.

Reason #2 why I largely dismiss the power of viral videos:
Even hyper-successful viral videos have made little to no impact at retail. OkGo is the best example to date of the positive power of viral videos and even they have not been all that successful. Here is a blurb from their (press release-ish) wikipedia page:

"After the band's performance at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards, their album moved up to #2 on the ITunes Music Store album sales charts (as of September 3, 2006). Their album sold 8,250 units in the following week, a 95% increase over the prior week, rocketing from #87 to #69 on the Billboard 200 album chart, the highest position ever achieved by any OK Go album to date."

Wow, I would not call moving from 87 to 69 “rocketing,” especially following an appearance on the VMA show. This is NOT all that impressive to me – or the record labels, either, I would imagine. These numbers are very good for a small indie band and all that, but if this the BEST case one can make for viral video it is not a very strong case at all.

The treadmills video has been watched over 11 million times and OkGo even won the Grammy for video of the year (as well they should have, IMO) so they have gotten lots of attention – too bad more people didn’t actually pay for the music. This is not a rip on OkGo – but rather pointing out that the concept of viral videos, even in the best of best of best case scenarios – has a long way to go. OkGo created something great (along with a far better written and far more market friendly song than most viral visds are attached to) that points the way to where the industry might/should/will go in the future. But Ben Franklin and his kite getting over with the key, is still a long way from people having electric bug-zappers on their patios.

Many, many bands have tried to get the same viral video buzz and only OkGo has turned their clip into mainstream attention. Bands expecting YouToogle to make them stars is like school kids expecting that they will be NBA/NFL stars when they grow up. It might actually happen to a tiny handful of athletic hopefuls, but the percentages are not in the kid’s favor. AND (to extend the metaphor oven further) the OkGo example shows that the rare kid that does make the pros will spend his time on the bench earning the league minimum salary. Kids are better off studying for a career other than sports if they want to stay above the poverty line and bands are better off trying to get signed to a major label and go about things the more “traditional” route if they wanna stay above the poverty line.

The viral video might (and I stress "might") help out a baby band that few have heard of, but it holds almost no value for an established band or artist - like Fall Out Boy or My Chemical Romance or Ludacris. The music industry, as currently constructed, is set up to make money off the later kind of artists - not the unknowns. To the music industry, viral video looks like something that "helps panda bears manage their stock portfolio" - a solution to a problem they don't know or care about. The music industry is definitely changing, and possibly to something where pandas need to check their mutual funds, but I doubt viral videos will still be the rage when that happens.

Reason #3 why I largely dismiss the power of viral videos:
Because people on the internet think it is a sure thing. When everyone tells me something is a can’t miss deal, (eToys, anyone?) I get very suspicious.

"Viral video" is the kind of catch-phrase that jumps into marketing vocabularies - ala synergy, click-through, tweens and so on. There is certainly some value in all these concepts, but when they become "hot" - they get over-used and beaten into the ground in the rush to apply their new media-ness to any and every situation. Remember when CD-ROMs and those added value CDs were going to change the record retail game? Maybe viral video will be the thing to make that change, but so far, I see zero signs that it has happened.

Labels: antville, controversy, music video, viral video, YouTube

On MTV's TRL today (January 24) there were two very disparate acts in the top ten. Okay, this is not unusual, but what was odd, was that both groups seemed to be wearing exactly the same outfits.

Yes My Chemical Romance and Pretty Rickey both appeared in clips where they were dressed in matching band unis. Some kind of Drumline homage, perhaps?

This has not happened since Rammstein and 98 Degrees both showed up on Dutch TV wearing identical wife-beater tank-tops in early 1999 - but that is another story for another time.

*Yes, I am aware that the Chemical Romance video was NOT the one pictured above. Today's video is a different, new clip - where the group is also dressed like Sgt. Pepper's Gothic Hearts Club Band.

Labels: controversy, music video, TRL

Over on the mighty antville, there was a discussion about commissioners and commissioning of jobs. Read the post, and the 100 plus comments here.

Refused TV is a production company in LA with a stable of directors. The head of Refused, Cathy Pellow, is also a free-lance video commissioner (who works mostly with Atlantic, I believe). I have written before, more generally, about the role of the director's rep.

What that means is directors repped by Cathy at Refused have their rep deciding who gets the job. Quite an advantage for the director and it also means the production company takes the production fee on a job they have given to themselves. Directors from other companies might also be writing on the jobs as well, but it is easy to see how the Refused directors might have the, um, inside track. This is not an incredibly rare situation but it obviously has attracted some attention.

This is certainly a conflict of interest. This does not mean that the directors at Refused are not talented or that they don’t deserve the jobs they get. Jobs get steered or pushed in a variety of directions all the time, but this is a text-book definition of conflict of interest. "A conflict of interest is a situation in which someone in a position of trust, such as a lawyer, a politician, or an executive or director of a corporation, has competing professional or personal interests. Such competing interests can make it difficult to fulfill his or her duties impartially. Even if there is no evidence of improper actions, a conflict of interest can create an appearance of impropriety that can undermine confidence in the ability of that person to act properly in his/her position."

If music videos were a city government, this would be like someone in the Public Works department handing out contracts to build a bridge or repair a sidewalk to the construction company that they own. That doesn’t mean that the streets won’t get fixed – but it does make one wonder. There is certainly room for problems in this situation. No real competition means that the city taxpayers might be paying more than they need to or getting substandard work for the dollars they are spending.

In a big city – there are rules and regulations that restrict how city contracts are awarded. There are oversight committees and inspectors to insure the work is done properly. In a small town, those protections and oversight don’t exist – the system is just not that big or sophisticated. Of course, big isn’t a guaranteed protection either – the US Army is a massive entity but they seem to be blindly giving contracts to Halliburton. Perhaps Cheney is the commissioner on those ones.

Well, that is where music videos are. Friends give jobs to friends. Cousins are on both sides of the equation and sometimes romances (shocker!) exist between label types and production types. We, as an industry, are still pretty small time so no one with power seems to be overly bothered by this. Obviously, a $20k job doesn’t deserve serious policing by anyone.

The part that struck me about the discussion on antville was the “Ooh, noo – don’t talk about that” tone of the comments. Not all, but many, commenters seemed to think that this kind of debate/discussion was pointless. Some were borderline hysterical that this kind of talk was somehow wrong. It seems completely on point to me. The only way to get videos on your reel is to get commissioned. I’m surprised more directors aren’t concerned with how that commissioning is done. Getting the gig is part of the craft, after all.

Out of all this hub-bub around Refused – nothing really has been done “wrong.” Chances are the record labels are happy with all the jobs commissioned by/to Refused. It smells fishy to other directors and production companies – but they are also certainly jealous of the inside position that Refused and Cathy have.

There are many instances of similar double dealings. There are major reps that used to be commissioners at certain labels and still have excellent relationships with the artists they used to work with. In that situation, the directors now repped by the former commissioner obviously have an excellent shot of working with the afore-mentioned artist.

Some commissioners hate certain production companies. Sometimes with good reason. A director at the hated company is gonna be SOL as long as that beefing commissioner is pulling the trigger.

Some labels owe big money to certain production companies from past jobs. So much back money is owed, at times, that the label will avoid using that production company for future work (and thus avoid paying the $ owed) – even if a director there might be the perfect one for the job.

One noted R&B manager type directs many/most/all of the videos by his artists. The label doesn’t really like it, but the manager has the juice to push himself through as the director. The label asks for treatments from other directors but those prod companies are often reluctant to waste their time, because they know they have little to no chance against the manager.

One big-time commissioner, now out of the business, was known for sleeping with directors and producers that they worked with. Obviously there is lots of room for things to go sideways there – try asking your ex for five bucks, let alone a six-figure job.

Jobs get commissioned the way they get commissioned. It’s not changing now and it’s not changing anytime soon. Directors have to control the things they can – their reel and their concept. Other, political elements will always be there. Always. Waiting for the industry (or life) to be conflict free would be futile, so it sure helps to play the game.

If a commissioner with ties to other directors or production companies is taking the treatments on a particular job, you might wanna move that job to the bottom of your to do list. Like somewhere below cleaning out the gutters and organizing you Palm Pictures DVD collection.

That being said – directors who are not the ones with the advantageous position should look around when they are deciding what production company to sign with. We all make our own breaks and it is a lot more fun (and profitable) to be the guy on the inside.

Labels: controversy, insider, music video

My last post about, the divide in the music video world between urban “street” artists/videos/directors and everyone else garnered some attention. I always appreciate the comments and emails. Even the ones that descend into discussions of what category a half-Asian cleric with a +2 Mace of Aspect Ratio falls into.

To restate my point (which I didn’t think would be that outside the box): Some of the best paid directing work is in street rap and hip-hop videos. That work is only available to directors who have their “ghetto pass” validated – and the number of non-black directors on that list is much smaller today than a few years ago – though there are some exceptions. That prompted this salient question from a commenter:

Very interesting. But why is it that urban/hip-hop music benefits more from videos than rock music? Is it a question of MTV's demographic?

In my opinion, there are a couple reasons …

One – Young people watch more videos
Young people (age 8-15) watch waaaay more music videos (whether MTV, BET, the internets or elsewhere) than older teens and twenty-somethings. Young people are more likely to be influenced by TV (videos and other advertising) than older music buyers who might respond more to what their friends like, what a hot girl likes or what might piss off their folks. Because the younger kids are more readily influenced by videos, the labels spend more on videos that appeal to them.

The audience demographic IS different between rock and urban music. Lots of the hip-hop and R&B that is selling well these days is the younger stuff – Chris Brown, Bow Wow, Jibbs, Cherish. Younger-targeted rock music – is not usually considered rock, it is often called “pop.” From Hanson to Click 5 – young rock/pop acts are categorized more with dance pop (Timberlake, JoJo, Ashlee Simpson, High School High) than it is with “older” rock like Jet or Avenged Sevenfold. People with drivers licenses simply don’t watch that many videos.


Two – Young people buy more music
Let’s face it – once a music consumer gets past the first year or two of high school, the stop buying music. Instead, they steal it. You can call it sharing, ripping or “freeing the enslaved audio files” if you like – but college aged kids pretty much just steal the music they like. A twelve year old is more likely to want to own the actual CD for his or her favorite artist – helping them feel like they are connected to the artist they admire. After age fifteen or so – most kids just wanna listen to what they listen to and save their money for weed – so they stop buying CDs and get the music off bittorrent or limewire instead.

I cannot overstate the importance of this. A band that is popular or considered cool means nothing to the label if the CDs (or iTunes downloads) are not being purchased. Many of us in entertainment industry take pride in our association with the cool or hip things that we work on. We have to, since we often don’t get paid much actual money. Us suckers might respond to the glamour of the music video world, but the labels only see the $.

Three – Urban music has a different idea of “keeping it real”
For many rock acts, (the exception being the newish theatrical bands like Killers, AFI, etc.) an expensive video does NOT really make them look cooler or get them more sales. Having a video that is too flashy or too pricey might make a band that values it’s “authenticity” or “artistic integrity” look corny and pre-processed.

For a hip-hop artist – having an expensive video is a source of pride that indicates their success or dominance in the field. Busta wants to have a bigger video than Ludacris and so on. An expensive video is a huge plus to an urban artist.

Big budgeted videos of all flavors are the best jobs for directors to get - but most of the pricier jobs are in urban and/or diva clips. Remember that directors make money based on the budgets of the jobs the do – not the status or fame of the artist. A video that gets lots of airplay garners the same payday for the director as a similarly budgeted clip that is featured only on antville and the artist’s myspace page. Directors tend to like big budgets because they pay the bills.

One of the biggest rappers around, 50 Cent, often taunts his “rival” rappers with his superior sales numbers. Jay-Z comes back from retirement and clowns Jim Jones and the Dip-Set for their weak sales. Can you imagine U2 or the Stones even acknowledging their sales to the public. Trust me, the white, rock acts know the numbers just as well, but in the rock world it is considered bad taste to discuss such things in the press. Rock acts are supposed to talk about their artistic process and all that.

Because of this – an urban video that gets played every hour on the hour on BET is a huge boost to the artist. A rock act that got that treatment might find prospective fans wondering if they were having te band shoved down their throats.

This is not to brand urban audiences as unsophisticated. They just tend to not care about the faux- or real artistry behind and album. Urban audiences will reject a “street” rapper whom they do not find to be sufficiently gritty or real. It’s just a different flavor of real from rock acts.

There it is – the urban market is younger, and because of that they watch more videos. Younger consumers actually BUY the music that videos promote – something that labels really seem to find important. The urban consumer, besides being younger, responds to more money on the screen which leads to bigger budgets for artists trying to reach that consumer.

That is my very long answer to the question about why urban/hip-hop music benefits more from videos than rock music. Wow. I need some kind of life.

Labels: controversy, insider, music video

Side by side on my piano keyboard …

Why are all hip-hop directors black and all rock directors white? Well, they’re not – it just seems that way.

There are certainly exceptions. Dave Meyers made a career out of doing videos for Jay-Z and Ja Rule (who were as “grimy” as videos got back in the day) and directing clips for white jocks to blast out of their Camaro in the high school parking lot like Offspring, Kid Rock and Saliva. Hype did a video for No Doubt as well. It is not carved in stone – but 98% of the time white directors do rock and black directors do rap.

Don’t get fooled by R&B either. R&B is not rap/hip-hop. Many white directors shoot black artists if they are singing. Where the dividing line comes in is when you get to artists that are “street.” There is a recent trend with "photographer" directors (Mannion, Mandler, et al) crossing the divide as well.

The world is certainly not black and white. There are white rappers and black rock singers in mostly black rock bands. But videos are not life, videos are marketing. Marketers feel safer when they know which box something goes in.

A big part of a director’s job – at least when trying to get work – is to convince the artist/label/manager that they can make the artist look the way they need to. The artist needs to be cool and by extension the director needs to be "cool" as well. That might mean the director should look edgy, or arty, or intense, or street or whatever. The label feels so much better if the director represents the flavor of cool that they want their artist to have.

Look at this page with all the photos of video directors. Some are funny (Spike looks so young and vulnerable Mark Foley might send him an email) but most give you some kind of an idea of the kind of clips they do. Senor X is with some hoochies. Look at Floria’s photo – who would ever think she does weird and disturbing videos with a glammed up gothic look?

I am not pro-segregation, but it helps a director book a job with an emo band if the artist thinks the director GETS their scene. Major rappers want to feel like they are in good hands with a director who won’t make them look like corny pop-stars.

Are there two separate video industries – one for black directors and one for white? Well, sort of.

Rock videos are a mixed bag for the labels. Some bands, like the Fray, have gone platinum with almost no video play. The new theatricality in videos has brought attention to Panic!, Fall Out Boy, AFI, My Chemical Marching Band Uniform and others. For a long time, rock bands were a bunch of dudes in black t-shirts acting angry – now that the visuals are more varied, the videos seem to be a more effective sales tool. But for years, rock videos rarely got played or didn't "move the needle" so the videos were neglected and under-funded by labels.

Getting played is the first step, but labels closely monitor whether increased video play turns into increased sales. The label’s job isn’t to get expensive videos to air for free on TV, their goal is to sell music. In the rock world, spending more on a video may or may not translate into increased sales.

In the urban world, video airplay is much more closely tied to sales. Hip-Hop videos move the needle. With a few exceptions, a label will get its investment back on videos for black artists. For every dollar they spend on locations, cameras, director fees and Patron – they get back more than a dollar. That is what big corporations like – reliability.

This is why labels spend way more money on hip-hop videos than they do on rock videos. Because rock videos might (maybe, sort of, sometimes) end up bringing in more money than they cost, while urban clips almost always do.

This is why there are two, alternative worlds in music video. Black directors can make a lot more money and there is way more work out there as compared to the size of the director talent pool. Say, say, say ...

Labels: controversy, insider, music video