www.deathcabforcutie.com

Up from 3/6 to 3/13

Ace made this video concurrently when he was chosen for the much more expensive "Crooked Teeth" video.

Are that many of you really having problems watching these online?

         

Nope it worked fine. Death Cab is played out.
'Nuff said.

         

odd: interment #2 today.

perhaps my fave so far. a bit too literal, but some nice iconography, and nice, simple animation. sure, the song's not particularly memorable, but short&tuneful enough (am i wrong or is it a sizeable (albeit sugar-coated) lift from the doors house of the rising sun?)

stream worked fine for me (mac, safari/ff, bband); unfortunate screencap, though...

         

better than his other Death Cab one; maybe my favorite thing he's done. And yeah my favorite so far.

         

Yeah, Aaron these have never worked for me :( - PC/Firefox+IE/XP/broadband, Mac/Firefox+Safari/OSX/dialup

         

Everyone has too much to say about these DCFC videos.... facts are is that they were made for five grand a piece and they are all great.... lets see what all of you hacks can make for 5 K ?

         

5K is a huge budget if you know how to get it done. I've never had that much. I just made a 10 minute 35mm short with 2K. Like Herzog said "money doesn't make movies, you make movies."

         

I dream of 5K for a promo. I guess most people who post here have made promos for less than 5K at some point. nuh. its not a pissing contest.

         

$5k is alot. It's also a gimmick for indie cred, which went out the window with O.C. contributions.

         

$5k is a lot of money or not a lot of money. it depends on what you are trying to do and how you are trying to do it. most of the videos i did last year were done within the $500 range. that's a very small amount of money. but right now i'm making a video for $20k and we're banging our heads trying to scrape every last cent we can out of the budget. still feels like a very small amount of money. it just depends.

personally, i think most of these death cab videos are great, and make very good use of the $5k budget. watching them, the budget never feels like an excuse to me.

         

Budget is always a bad excuse for poor artistry... but none of these videos have been horrible anyway.

         

The budget discussion is negligble. I don't recall where it got out these were made for 5k each, but there's an obvious reason as a director, and not a producer, that I don't want that information to be public knowledge... It's fairly easy to say that you can make a video for a certain amount of money at points in your career, but the expectation that one can continually deliver at that budget is not fair. When you are starting out and pulling in favors you can get away with a certain amount of thrift / graft / blagging. But do a post mortem cost and see what the piece would have cost if you had paid actual values for crew and equipment and locations and all that stuff you don't even think about guerilla style, etc. I think you can find that a $4k video is actually a $40k video easily.

It's also enormously dangerous given the problems we are having with the business of making videos. Now videos are being used to generate revenue despite being a line item cost as a marketing expense. Directors are not seeing any of that. Production companies aren't. It's funny now that I am being approached by some reps - having wandered into videos so naively - to find out that I shouldn't really expect to make money doing videos.

Thus on antville it's easy to slam people but judgmentalism often doesn't take into consideration if, say, a director has made something to make their rent money. It happens, and there's nothing wrong with it, and I doubt there's a single reader here who wouldn't jump at the chance to do the same.

For better or worse, at least, no one worked on Directions to make their rent money. Everyone tried their hardest and damnedest.

I have made far more money shooting EPKs and the like in the past few years and have lost personal money on every video made thus far.

One shouldn't expect - unless they are a singular, rare talent and there's only going to be a handful of those - to stick around in videos that long. The expectation of the industry itself is that there's always some new, hungry person ready to sacrifice a lot to make a new video. What I don't want, given the state of things, is for the norm to become an expectation to make videos for $5k, which I'm telling you is becoming more and more established at the indie labels. I've heard some people saying "oh man, fan videos are good enough". Maybe for some one shot, viral video impact which is a total Blair Witch-ian crapshoot.

But I think it's obvious that the Internet provides the best distribution medium for videos we've ever had, even more than television, and so what people should be concerning themselves with is making videos of quality, because even antville shows that quality regardless of origin of country or budget brings eyeballs - and there's a certain quality of production that comes with a proper budget.

I think Chris Cunningham once said, and kev can correct me, that to be a video director you need to either have rich parents or be a con artist.

Here's an interesting question - best videos you've seen that you know cost less than $5k?

         

Just as a rejoinder - $5k was not for indie cred. $5k was a miracle that a major record label would commit to. And if you can think of an indie label who could fund something like this when that's money they could spend on 11 individual acts...

Make no mistake about it, this is obviously the move of a band on a major label who now has access to larger opportunities. And they could've done a million things with that marketing money, and they chose this and so did their label. I think it's proof that given the right intentions and relationships that even major labels and their artists can find a way to do interesting work together.

         

20 cheers for Otaku. I almost don't even know what to add to what he had to say, I support all of that. I'm not quite sure price tag should mean much either way. We all have different opinions of what we like or don't like. What one person thinks is genius is inspiring to another. The state of the industry and videos is a big issue here and how directors will be compensated with a new sales market is a big issue. Also pointed out are the favors donated by many resources: production crews, gear, edit, FX etc. These all come with a value. Living in NYC is truly expensive for me. And unfortunately our government doesnt really believe its important to nurture the arts, so its very difficult for directors to take their baby steps. I think its truly important that we all respect all of these factors as much a possible when evaluating work.

I know that this forum is most concerned with videos but I do think that this an interesting segueway into the topic of advertising asking us ,the viewer to cultivate their ideas. This is a growing trend. I was just reading about how Al Gore's viewer partially programmed cable channel has inked a deal with many large advertsiers like beauty product companies and soft drink manufacturors to promote the idea of us making their ads for them. Anyone heard about the new Mastercard campaign coming which is the same idea. To me this is even worse. I have tons of friends who slave around the clock without days off for weeks for big conglomerate ad firms. The the firms get the savy idea to have use write and direct their ideas for a cracker jack prize...any thoughts on it?

         

That quote sounds vageuly familiar, yeah, but I couldn't find it in my archives, quickly.

Alex Rutterford's quote "If you're prepared to take a bite of the shit sandwich, then it might be worth chomping away." is here.

As for the state of the industry: yes, yes, and yes. What's happening with the MVDGA anyway? I would love to work for them (and get no money, I know).

I'm not in the post houses and prod companies so I don't know what people are talking about outside of here and there..

         

quixotic: The vast democratization of our society that the Internet is (so far) propelling is, certainly shaking up several industries.

Economics is a huge factor here. Lowest cost for biggest bang will (almost) always win. I couldn't even guess how this will turn out, but things are accelerating, so maybe it won't take too long. Although my hunch is that home-made 'viral' marketing (i.e. non-industry) will just become another niche, and not completely obliterate the ad/mv industry.

It would be redundant to rehash what's already been said, though I guess it is important to keep saying it. [sorry I kept editing this]

         

Finally, I don't think budgets will stay extremely low. As the technology improves, so will opportunities for interconnectivity of labels, artists, and fans.. Creates a new kind of beast, in a way.

The term "music video director", as we've been noticing more and more here, is less an exclusive club than it used to be. We're now finally seeing the 'bottom' end of it.

Overall I think this makes Alex's job more difficult.

As for budgets, once everybody lands on whatever new ground the internet is creating, we'll see things prosper a bit more. ...just some thoughts

         

I've never been able to see any of these in their entirety.

         

Anyway, that was a great video.

         

This is the most effective and deliberate of the series imho, its pretty hi-concept but still the only one that was fully realized and didnt limp around wearing the budget like a cast.

• charming.

A quick note to anyone talking absolutes in the financial mumbo jumbo.

I know from Expearyince 5K is more than enough to produce a 3.5 min animation. *If you are a talented director, if you know how to manage your resources and time.

But its not enough to hire a animator, an asst. and a DP with a focus puller and lighting.

Anytime you do a gig for 5k you are shooting on 16mm, DV or DigitalSLR, if you are smart you go with the latter and if the project really needs 16mm do transfer and do a digi-edit... and you go at it alone or with someone who shares the labour of love.

Its all about choosing a simple, clear fun treatment and keeping materials to a minimum , 1-2 mediums (ie. clay and plastic models)

Set a a realsistic timeline that you can AFFORD where youre not loosing your rent money when you go over dealine a couple days.

And most important have a passion for what you are doing, otherwise its going to cost 75k to have someone with passion do it for you ;)

         

word. this video was really great. Best so far.