30frames

Happy New Year to all!

Hey, I got some mail. Okay, not really mail, but over on the ‘Ville, a poster named budget added the following comment:

Would you please weigh in on this article: Music Industry Looks To Internet For Revival Particularly this quote: "Universal Music, the industry leader, has said that it makes “tens of millions of dollars” from YouTube." We're making 10k videos that end up making their labels millions of dollars! We're still getting screwed over!!!

Okay, here is me weighing in …

First of all, click on over to the Financial Times and read the brief article. While doing that, remember it is the FINANCIAL F^&%ING TIMES. Everything in that article is skewed towards investors and potential investors. If ‘High Times’ magazine covered the recent Presidential election (maybe they did, my subscription ran out) you can bet that HT focused on which candidate would make it easier for their readership to get high. Financial Times has just as skewed a world view. FT is all about telling investor/readers where they might (or might not) want to put their money. The info in that article is bound to be massaged, but doesn’t mean it ain’t useful.

The fact that Warner and Youtube/Google are beefing over the percentages means that there IS some money to be made from the ads that run over and alongside the videos. The “Music industry looks to internet for revival” headline at least seems reasonable. But how much money is really there?

This is where the waters will get murky. You gotta remember the recent financial collapse was preceded by lots and lots and lots of articles in FT and Wall Street Journal about how the markets and the economy and the mortgage universe was doing just peachy. The financial press is full of ridiculously upbeat projections and predictions that are not justified by real-world facts – these kind of publications are often more cheerleaders than news sources. (Note that I have taken down last year’s prediction that the shoot for the film ‘Vicky Christina Barcelona’ would turn into a Penelope Cruz – 30f – Scarlett Johansson sandwich. Sigh.)

Anyway – take any and all income predictions and earnings estimates with a Fat Joe-sized grain of salt. Here is the quote that perturbed mr. budget - “Universal Music, the industry leader, has said that it makes “tens of millions of dollars” from YouTube.” Now contrast that with “Hulu and YouTube would make about $70m and $100m respectively in US advertising revenues in 2008” from a little farther down in that same article. How do those things fit together? (Hint, they don't.)

Now, Uni is a big player, but if YouToogle as a whole is making $100million per year (and this estimate might be as cooked up as the financial health of AIG and Fannie Mae) then how could Universal possibly be getting that much? I am unsure what the sharing arrangement is, but if YouTube makes a hundred mil, the copyright owners probably don’t get an equal share – so the copyright owners of YouTube clips can’t be getting the ‘same’ $100 mil, can they?

Back to Universal. Uni’s supposed “tens of millions” means multiples of ten, right? So “tens of millions” means at least twenty in my book. That is 20% of YouTube’s (alleged) total revenue (and forgetting for now that the split is unlikely to be 50/50). I imagine Uni might earn 20% of the music video based revenue on YouToogle, but music videos are a fraction of all the content on YouTube. A popular fraction to be sure, but if YouToogle brings in $100m, much of that must come from wedding videos, skateboarding tips and dogs eating burritos, right?

This leads me to the conclusion that it is highly unlikely that Universal makes what they are saying off of YouTube videos. There are plenty of other claims in that article that can be parsed, but you get the point. Like fisherman, businessman make big, boastful claims. Especially if they are trying to convince shareholders that all is well.

Now, onto the most salient part of budget’s comment/question: “We're making 10k videos that end up making their labels millions of dollars! We're still getting screwed over!!!”

Yes, plenty of directors have budgets of $10k or less to make videos, and these do end up on the internet and they might be earning the record label some cash. But my guess would be that Britney, Jay-Z and their fellow megastars earn the majority of the online revenue for a label and plenty of the low-end jobs (let’s say the $10k range) attract way, way less viewers and thus less ad revenue. It is unlikely that Universal is earning their (fictional?) tens of millions off of the low-end jobs. Long tail and all that.

The real reason that MV budgets were big in the 90s was competition. To get played on MTV, a video had to beat out rival videos for limited air time. TRL and other prime spots on Viacom's cable-waves were prime real estate. As more and more videos got made, the labels had to spend more and more to attract the eye of MTV’s programmers and win those scarce slots. This led to the kind of budgetary arms race that brought us Puffy’s ‘Victory’ and O-Town’s ode to nocturnal emissions ‘Liquid Dreams.’

But, now, with the ‘air time’ on the ‘Net being limitless – why should a label pull out the budgetary big guns? A once scarce resource (exposure for the videos) has suddenly become free. The labels need to attract eyeballs, but the eyeballs they are after are now the end consumers and not a conference room full of people at 1515 Boadway, and winning that attention seems to be based more on having a hot song or a visual hook (i.e. synchronized treadmills) rather than massive post effects or stunts like the ‘big’ videos of old.

So, budget, does that help any? It doesn’t make that $10k budget stretch any farther, but hopefully you’ll see that the labels likely aren’t raking in the money off Youtube clicks for Shwayze. To be honest, $10k is probably an appropriate amount to spend on a music video if the label is hoping to get a few dollars back from YouTube advertising.

If we don’t like the budgets the labels offer, we can always turn the jobs down. Ha.

Anyway, I won’t turn down questions. Send me an email or drop a comment below.

Labels: label, mail, MTV, music video, philosophy, prod co, TRL, video link, viral video, YouTube

Time for another run into the mail-bag. Please understand that nothing I write is THE answer. These are only my opinions, and should be treated as the ramblings of some dude with a laptop and the time to write this kind of stuff.

“A question I have as an aspiring MV director, (beside the obvious 'find a new career'), is how much of being successful merely relies on being at the right place?

I look at directors like *name deleted*, who are amazingly talented, but don't seem to be working much because they live in northern California. Then i look at directors like *also deleted*, who is amazingly terrible, but seems to be working all the time because he lives in LA.

Now is that just a showcase of the two parties ambition? Or a bi product of their location?"


Should I feel obliged to move somewhere to get more work? Or focus on doing the best I can and hope that the work finds me?”

First of all, I don't think anyone works or doesn't work because of where they live. There are so many factors that go into creating and maintaining a music video career - reel, representation, concept and so on (for my thoughts on those, read every other post in this blog).

The underlying question here is a two-parter. (1) Does being in LA help a career in music videos? and (2) should a given director move here to help their career?

Does being in LA help your career?
My short answer is “definitely.” The vast majority of big label work gets shot out here. A few labels are still back in NYC, but filming in the five boroughs is very costly these days. Simply for cost savings on flights to jobs shooting in LA – living in the 323/310/818 region is useful. (Note that for those in the Black Director Division - Atlanta is also a possibility.)

To a certain extent, living in LA helps all show-business jobs. Young actors who reside elsewhere take meetings with casting or agenting types and get told “Call us back when you move to LA.” Living in LA means you are in the game to a lot of people who might be looking to hire you – and those folks have a point. Show-business (whether MVs, screen-writing, whatever) takes a serious, usually long-term commitment and how committed are you if you still reside in the room with Mom’s sewing machine and your old Slayer posters on the wall?

Living in Los Angeles is like having a business card printed with your name on it, headshots or a nice navy suit to wear to an interview – it doesn’t mean that you can do the job, but people will struggle to take you seriously if you don’t have it.

Should YOU move to LA?
For directors who are NOT shooting big label jobs – staying where you are might be the plan. If you aren’t working on jobs where the commissioner demands you shoot in LA – then maybe you are fine where you are. Save your money (unless you live in the Bay Area, where it costs more than here) and stay put.

What is success for you? There are plenty of directors who live other places. They may not be making their sole living from videos – but maybe they are. If your goal is to do videos for Chingy or the Killers – you better be in LA. If a director likes doing the jobs they can get without too much stress or having to write on tracks they don’t really like – stay home. Being a part-time director and part time assistant at Paramount is very tough. If directing won't pay the bills here - you might want to stay put.

For example, I don’t know where Ben Dickinson lives but he made a great video in Brooklyn.

To the questioner I would say - Look at your reel and look at the reel of the people getting the kind of work you want to get. Not the guys writing and not getting the jobs – but the people who are booking stuff you wanna book. If your reel isn’t better than theirs – then moving won’t solve the problem.

I don’t believe directors book jobs just because they’re in the right place at the right time. That’s the defeatist “it’s not what you know it’s who you know” crap. Lots of Silver Lake film-school motherfuckas spout stuff like that, but they also complain that anyone who showers or gets a paying job is a “sell out.” Ignore those people, but it might be hard in the Bay Area.

Living in LA will NOT make you a better director. It MIGHT make it easier for you to get jobs IF you are already in the running for them now. Moving here will not jump start your career, but you might meet some bands and get friendly and meet some people and do some spec work that comes out well and so on.

The questioner added:

"a short anecdote a colleague shared on the matter of location:

Talented people with no ambition move to San Francisco.
Talented people with ambition move to NYC.
People with ambition and no talent move to LA.

I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on location, as I'm sure many other directors would too."

I guess. LA is full of very ambitious people. LA is scary as hell. It is THE place to be if you want a career in show business. Sorry, NYC doesn’t count unless your idea of show business is Broadway or publishing.

There are lots of people living in Buffalo or Austin who tell themselves they would be big stars as actors/singers/stuntmen/directors if they were only in LA. But move here, and all the excuses evaporate. After you’ve been in LA six months, who do you blame that your name isn’t up in lights? I blame my parents, but I'm a hack.

LA won’t fix what’s wrong with a director’s career, but it will definitely jump start the process of figuring out if you really want to do what it takes. By “have what it takes” I mean paying big $ for a crappy Venice apartment, avoiding Scientology types and sitting on the 405 for three hours a day.

Labels: baby director, mail, music video