The Jamie Lidell intro'd show was, if anything, a confirmation that music videos are still a fore-front creative arena. The selection included the following mv's:

Everything Everything - Photoshop Handsome, Dir. Jonathan Higgs (and fifty-odd Photoshoppers)

Plan B - Prayin', Dir. Daniel Wolfe

Dogboarding, Dir. DANIELS

Grum - Through the night, Dir. The General Assembly

Chase&Status - Let you go, Dir. Thirtytwo

De Jeugd Van Tegenwoordig - Elektrotechnique, Dir. Lernert & Sander

and, as winner of the Saatchi/Vimeo/Moby video contest (which apparently received close to 600 entries), After by Alberto Gomez.

Congrats all round.

         

a new hype about mass battle scenes right here right know? some new fountains of big money flowing somewhere?

->regarding plan b

look @ what miss beyoncé did (dir francis lawrence): youtu.be

www.kovideo.net

         

moby lives off these videos off some poor kids' work he's a parasite cheap cunt, makin elevator muzak and getting videos for free

         

cosign legion, these contests must be stopped. it feels very exploitive.

         

yes death to the music video contests please.

         

alberto gomez will have another perspective on this topic... I guess. enjoying cannes-life in the moment and being a winner. but, true, it is a very narrow line between having a life-time occasion and being exploited. even though I guess it is more the fault of saatchi and saatchi, less moby...

         

i think its moby, its the 2nd or 3rd moby mv contest ps: i enjoyed the winning video

         

That radiohead aniboom contest was a good ideal though. Curated, funded.

         

Yo legion, you participated in that m83 contest no?

         

Alberto Gomez is one person out of 600. A lot of whom input significant time and personal funds into their projects, only to see the fruits of their labor become incredibly diluted due to a wave of overexposure. The problem is that these contests serve the goals of the artist/ad agency/host more than they serve the goals of the participants. The main result of this contest was that a lot of bloggable Moby content got generated and spread all over the social networks for a month while 99% of the participants ended up with lost cash, time and a video that anyone cool probably won't want to watch because it's the 18th bajillion shitty moby video that they've seen posted that week.

         

@otc So does the fault lie with moby/ad agencies or the suckers who enter these things.

It's not like people don't know going in that they aren't getting paid and there will most likely be a lot of entries.

If no one entered them or all the content was extremely shitty, then moby would most likely stop doing the contest. But as long as large amounts of people are willing to put their own money/time/energy into make free videos in hopes of being "discovered" then get to used it.

And also don't most music videos serve the goal of the artist/label as opposed to the director.

         

i'm with macguffin

         

I'm not saying that the people hosting these contests are inherently evil or have exploitative intentions, I'm just pointing out the end result. I don't think that anyone was tricked, forced or coerced into making a video but I doubt most people thought they would be 1 out of 600 entries (I think they emailed everyone on vimeo about it), those are some shitty odds.

The problem with the whole process is that it's not setting up a situation to create interesting work - the filmmakers are given no resources and the sheer number of people writing on the same songs virtually guarantees redundancies. It's a recipe for mediocrity as we've seen again and again, not just with this contest but with others. Personally I don't think it's a good way for aspiring directors to market their work, your work looks less distinctive standing next to an army of similar projects and it's got that young "give me a shot coach" feel to it.

You could argue that the truly talented will rise to the top but I think the same talent could be breaking through without the contest system and they would be all the more distinctive for it. (like the other 6 entries in the showcase).

As for the comment about all videos serving the artist - generally those videos aren't funded out of pocket by the director. It used to be the director would even get paid to do them.

         

It's hard to get angry about this when major labels are talking "real" directors into pitching on 5k videos.

         

@pancho yes i did participate in the m83 mv contest, ended up runner up. but what makes moby a cheap cunt is that he has launched what? 3 music video contests till now? he used to be a high profile artist, did his budgets dropped to 0? @budget: they are not talking them into pitching, they are just texting them via blackberry, like kalstark once said: "wanna write?"

         

"WANNA WRITE? HUGE ARTIST!!! NEED AMAZING IDEA!!! NO $$ :( "

         

'probably won't want to watch because it's the 18th bajillion shitty moby video that they've seen posted that week' 'It's hard to get angry about this when major labels are talking "real" directors into pitching on 5k videos' true true

'he used to be a high profile artist, did his budgets dropped to 0?' maybe 5k huh, or 10k...

What to do... music videos contests generate a lot of crappy content, but they make a lot of sense for labels..

         

speaking of which: www.nuclearblastusa.com

         

even you, sepultura?

         

utube channel www.youtube.com