Herd-tastic
Just part of the music video herd .
April 11th, 2007: The day 30frames officially became the most depressing blog on the planet.
Ahh, c'mon - that's not true. I think you missed this one back in October. THAT was when 30frames became the most depressing blog on the planet.
I am working on vetting a post on corruption/bribery/kickbacks. Will that be depressing or just fight-inducing?
Did you see that link to the old videos from 83? I found it fascinating to watch the ultra-low-key FM DJ stylings of Mark Goodman. Or is that depressing too? Damn, I thing my "depress-ometer" needs to be recalibrated.
This decade will be known for its low budgets.
I was asked recently, and I gotta ask you, 30f: What were budgets like in the 80's?
I was surprised recently when I saw A Tribe Called Quest's 1nce Again vid by Hype circa 1996. It's a totally 'lost' video, not among Hype's best, but still holds more creativity and dollars (300K?) than most rap vids today. I totally agree: Less dollars = less chance for creativity.
That MTV stream is really sweet. TV was less hyper back then, at least by our standards.
I still read it, even though it takes a little piece of my soul every time.
Suggestions for future post titles:
'Product Placement Will Save Us All' 'Hi-def Youtube Sites Of The Future Will Save Us All' 'Cheaper Digital Hardware will Save Us All' 'Antville: Racist?' (Just kidding Prog!)
re: product placement: comin' atcha! ("Hip-Hop Pop-Up is a glimpse at a grim but potential future of the state of mainstream rap music.")
30f: You very obviously come from an older school of working types that need 300k to make a video. And regardless of said budget, the pieces made tend to be shitty videos anyway. It's like some kind of justification for what you do or the professional stance you 'seem' to hold.
The more I read your blog, the more I realize that for you, the loss of lucre is more important than the loss of creativity - regardless of how many articles you post that feign to claim the latter.
Most of the comments you write on this site tend to fall in one of three categories:
1: Read my blog (which at first was very exciting. For here is the POV of an insider exposing the carpet's threadwork -- but now, holds no more insight beyond the cliches, or worse, wallows in a thin veneer of real speak which barely masks your self loathing for yester year).
2: This video isn't good because it makes the artist look weird and/or doesn't sell to his/her audience:
Which is odd considering your rants about the "labels' requests". How/why would you be against such requests if the trend of your own opinion(s) seem to follow the same frowned upon logic...?
3: "I already spoke about this in depth" (insert link to a nebulous article posted on your blog).
For me, you've already jumped the shark a long time ago. And your discourse has transformed into something so tired that the whiny siren call has become as mediocre as the videos your 'wonder budgets' once produced.
I'm sure you're a super cool guy, but man, I sometimes wonder if you've even got teeth left inside your mouth.
30f - I think you're actually thinning the herd with your blog and for that I say we all collectively owe you a beer. Looking forward to your "gift" exposé.
hey 30f - I'm relatively new to antville, so firstly wanna say hi. It's also the first time i've been to your blog page, so secondly i wanna say thank you for the link... really great stuff, and i can associate with so much you write there.
lusk - All I can say is "sorry." This is what I am, this is how my brain works, this is what I do.
kev - regarding MV budgets in the 80s: I am certainly not an expert and that was way before my time in the industry, but I will (not surprisingly) offer my partially informed opinion.
In the early 80s, the budgets were quite small, since the whole thing was just getting started. I would guess that us$50k would have been considered a very good budget even for a major label. Inflation and the rising cost of things obviously pushed the number higher as the 80s went on.
All throughout the 80s there were also these mega-budgeted jobs (like Thriller) that defy the "industry norms." I would guess that back then, the "this is how we do things" was not as standardized as it is now, so there was more deviation in budgets (as well as the commissioning process, who actually paid for the videos and all that). Many of the biggest bands of the eighties probably didn’t even have a single word in their label contracts about videos since those contracts last for years and might have been signed before MV became something important enough to be jargoned up by lawyers.
In the middle to late 80s labels started hiring people to deal specifically with producing/concepting videos – commissioners or whatever we call ‘em – since it looked like videos were here to stay. Budgets were climbing, both because the artists wanted to top what others had done and the labels saw videos as a good promotional investment as cable/MTV became a larger force.
Apparently, for many artists, the labels paid 100% of the video costs back then, which got to be a problem for labels when powerful bands (like GNR) could push through their super-expensive ideas but have no responsibility for paying for them. Labels have changed the contract structure so that, now, the artist (usually) splits the cost of the video as a recoupable expense.
My guess is that many “big” videos from the late ‘80s (say INXS, Janet Jackson or U2) were in the 100-200k range. In the 1990s – the budgets really took off.
