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vilainde
>> Denizen of the Citizens Band <<
Niue
7443 Posts |
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rivum
= Cult of Ray =
Canada
265 Posts |
 Posted - 03/03/2014 : 04:23:55
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| i assume that's not the official video? |
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peter radiator
= Cult of Ray =
USA
653 Posts |
Posted - 03/03/2014 : 08:03:55
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If it is not the official video, it's quite odd that it looks to have a decent budget, and that both Josh Frank and Steve Appleby were involved.
Could this have been leaked or merely posted early by mistake, thwarting a Pixiesmusic.com surprise premiere?
~ Peter Radiator
"Real music is out there and real people are making it." ~ Webb Wilder |
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sdon
= Cult of Ray =
France
786 Posts |
Posted - 03/03/2014 : 10:48:21
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Hard to believe it's not official
Not very interesting though
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"Aristophanes! (gong sounds)" |
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Classic Masher
- FB Fan -
146 Posts |
Posted - 03/03/2014 : 12:34:37
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quote:
Originally posted by rivum
i assume that's not the official video?
I hope it is. I like it. Made me smile.
"Mixed messages from Sir Naff, please authenticate..." |
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IBreed
= Cult of Ray =
310 Posts |
Posted - 03/03/2014 : 14:49:23
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i think peter's got it, it's definitely official. the production values are just too high. it's obviously been posted prior to the band wishing to unveil.. but it's been a month since magdalena, so i'd expect it to be posted "officially" very soon.
i like it. probably my favorite video alongside the much maligned but very nice andro queen! |
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matto
= Cult of Ray =
USA
954 Posts |
Posted - 03/03/2014 : 15:32:35
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did they skip 3/3 because of post-oscars?
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baby poop, curry |
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picpic
* Dog in the Sand *
Belgium
1874 Posts |
Posted - 03/03/2014 : 22:20:39
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As poor as the other videos IMO, but the photography is quite interesting.
Still believe Pixies music does not need videos. But that's probably mandatory if they want to have visibility on the web & attract audiences.
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"Service Unavailable" |
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Joey Joe Jo Jr. Chabadoo
* Dog in the Sand *
1079 Posts |
Posted - 03/04/2014 : 02:32:13
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Kind of funny and kind of... contemporary. As we are saturated with images, music videos became pointless today.
Anyway, those Lidl versions of Frank Black and Kim Deal are funny. The space woman does look a bit like young Kim, doesn't she?
I always felt this song was a message to Kim Deal, am I right or just another enthusiastic dumb fan?
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picpic
* Dog in the Sand *
Belgium
1874 Posts |
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The Champ
= Cult of Ray =
Canada
736 Posts |
Posted - 03/06/2014 : 04:58:07
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| Sorry, but due to the low quality of these videos, they have become more like email spam than anything artistic. I had high hopes for Andro Queen. |
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sdon
= Cult of Ray =
France
786 Posts |
Posted - 03/06/2014 : 05:49:25
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pixies 1.0 era videos look like masterpieces in comparison
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"Aristophanes! (gong sounds)" |
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IBreed
= Cult of Ray =
310 Posts |
Posted - 03/06/2014 : 06:38:06
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| don't quite get what's so bad about this one. or blue eyed hexe. or even andro. what goes boom was super lame. |
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peter radiator
= Cult of Ray =
USA
653 Posts |
Posted - 03/06/2014 : 11:53:29
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It's worth noting that Pixies v1.0-era videos were financed by 4AD/Elektra Records, with as few as two or three clips made per album.
Most of them cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce, at least half of which was likely charged directly to the band by way of withholding their royalties until those video production costs were recouped.
Things are different now. Making "broadcast quality" promotional videos can now be done for as little as a few hundred bucks, and by a small team of as few as one or two filmmakers.
It makes no sense for the band, which is now financing everything itself, to spend an extravagant amount on videos they have little to no intention of appearing in or in helping to conceive or execute themselves. Especially when they want to make one for each and every song they are releasing, and know that most folks will wind up watching them on mobile phones, tablets or laptops.
They're simply using this as an opportunity to give small commissions to visual artists whose work they dig, with no strings attached, and hope that it helps to spread their songs around the web.
Within that framework, I feel that at least three of the videos made to date have been outstanding.
~ Peter Radiator
"Real music is out there and real people are making it." ~ Webb Wilder |
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sdon
= Cult of Ray =
France
786 Posts |
Posted - 03/06/2014 : 20:00:52
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The problem is not the quality of shooting, or the professional image, it's the storytelling and the emotion.
They're very poor, therefore useless. And very inconsistent.
For me Bagboy (1) stands out (there is a plot + a marked visual style)
Indie Cindy could have been interesting, but isn't.
Toe is peculiar, I don't like the song nor the cutesy characters but at least there is an intention, a creative approach, and the director seems to have had fun.
Magdalena is boring. Greens too. Too explicit, or too thin.
Boom is fun and appealing, amateurish but in a good way.
Hexe is great, even if plotless.
My gripe is that those videos do not convey a consistent band personality, whether it would have been lo-fi, horror, teensex, scifi, stuckism... :)
They're just 'carte blanche' to a bunch of probably underpaid directors. So they lack artitistic intention and direction and dilute the band's personality instead of reinforcing it
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"Aristophanes! (gong sounds)" |
Edited by - sdon on 03/06/2014 20:01:16 |
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The Champ
= Cult of Ray =
Canada
736 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2014 : 03:04:34
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Hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce? That is a bit of a stretch.
Here comes your man was shot by friends, Head on was....head on, monkey gone to heaven looked like it was shot by two cameras and a smoke machine. Allison? Maybe a few grand but definitely not anywhere near hundred of thousands of dollars. Veloria? There is no way in hell they would ever approve that kind of budget back then.
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picpic
* Dog in the Sand *
Belgium
1874 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2014 : 03:53:17
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| Alec Eiffel looks like a "real" MTV video with a few props, effects etc... so it probably required a day of shooting, production costs, etc... and must have cost some money back then. Maybe not "hundred of thousands of dollars", but certainly more than Velouria. |
Edited by - picpic on 03/07/2014 04:02:45 |
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peter radiator
= Cult of Ray =
USA
653 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2014 : 06:41:17
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quote:
Originally posted by The Champ
Hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce? That is a bit of a stretch.
Here comes your man was shot by friends, Head on was....head on, monkey gone to heaven looked like it was shot by two cameras and a smoke machine. Allison? Maybe a few grand but definitely not anywhere near hundred of thousands of dollars. Veloria? There is no way in hell they would ever approve that kind of budget back then.
The clip for "Velouria" was seen as a reaction to both the outrageous budgets required for "professional" music videos at that time, as well as a middle finger to the MTV culture in general.
I think many people on these boards might be surprised to learn just how much it cost to shoot decent looking promo videos back in the day. Even if you were not using film, and just going with videotape.
Before the digital revolution, such efforts routinely cost $100,000 and much more, and that's just for a one or two-day shoot in a controlled environment such as a studio or warehouse, as was likely the case for "Monkey Gone To Heaven."
It's not just "two cameras and a smoke machine."
Not only do you have the rental of a great deal of equipment, such as professional cameras, lights, props (sometimes even rental musical gear, so the band did not have to transport their own stuff to the facility), dollies, special effects equipment, etc..., you often have a day or two of prep time on the space before the band shows up, or before any type of shooting commences. All of that costs real money.
The unions were almost always involved in some way or another, which ups the price even more, and usually requires additional people on set to do specific tasks.
Then there is security, liability insurance and catering for the entire operation - plus rental of the location itself.
After that, you've got editing, color-correction and other types of post-production - all of which back in those days was handled at professional production houses that charged as much as several hundred dollars an hour for the use of their facilities and services.
There were essentially no such things as "home editing suites," where folks could sit around in their pajamas dicking around on a laptop for days at a time while they got everything just the way they wanted it.
Non-linear editing had only just been invented, and only major Hollywood productions could reliably afford to mess with that. The early Pixies music videos were edited in a time-consuming, linear fashion, on film or videotape.
Essentially, these were made like short indie films - which at the time routinely cost between $50,000 and $250,000.
Those were also the "boom years" of the music video business, when everyone "had" to make an impressive, professional video (especially if you were connected with a major label or large indie affiliate of a major, such as Elektra / 4AD), if they wanted any chance of getting airplay on MTV, MuchMusic, etc...
As a result, technicians and studios jacked their prices to the hilt because they could, and the labels (and bands, unfortunately, by proxy) paid through the nose for this, because they felt they had to keep up with the status quo to compete.
It was very rare for successful and/or popular promo videos which were made for less than the standard rate to sneak through to regular rotation.
One of the most obvious examples of such an anomaly was TMBG's "Don't Let's Start," a great and memorable video which practically made their career in terms of breaking them out of the ultra-underground into the "mainstream" of alternative college rock.
It did so by going in a COMPLETELY low-fi route and blatantly reveling in its cheapness - by shooting on 16mm outdoors in a rundown industrial area (likely without permission or permits) using only natural, available light.
That video reportedly cost around $1,000, but that was probably intentionally underestimated a bit as a marketing gimmick, just as THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT actually cost almost triple what was initially reported, which was still a relatively paltry sum by Hollywood standards, but which did not sound nearly as impressive as the "official," lower figure leaked to the press.
Even if TMBG's video cost $5,000 for film, processing, editing, audio synch and video transfer, it was still an amazing steal for the time.
However, it looked like little more than a glorified home movie, as did most of the other examples of "DIY music video production" from that time period, and many people in the biz looked down on it - despite its popularity.
That look and feel worked well for TMBG's ethos, but that is not at all how the Pixies videos look. The closest you get to that idea and caliber is "Velouria," which, as I said before, really sticks out in their video library.
Clips like "Here Comes Your Man," "Head On," "Dig For Fire/Allison" and "Alec Eiffel," could have easily cost as much as $100,000. It may be hard to conceive in this day and age, but it's true. "Dig For Fire/Allison" in particular, as it was clearly shot on film, which ups the overall cost in a huge way.
The other reason many may see a qualitative difference between the concept and/or execution of the band's earlier videos and the ones they have now, is that, because of the greater cost back in the day, there was a higher threshold which usually had to be met all around for such projects.
Numerous people often had to sign off on a concept, and there generally was a small team of producers, director(s) and technical staff involved. Today's videos are produced on relatively miniscule budgets by visual artists the band respected enough to commission, and by the looks of things, as few as one or two folks are behind each of the clips (with maybe a handful of crew at best for a couple of them).
These artists were given complete freedom to interpret the tracks however they wished, so these essentially became "vanity projects," but in the best sense of the word. I have a feeling the artists involved were trying to please themselves at least as much (if not much more) than they were concerned with pleasing the public or the band.
It's a totally different mindset than had been in place before, when videos were expected to be quirky and memorable on some level, but also had to be broadly accepted by the mass public in order to rise higher in TV rotation - just like the songs themselves were expected to do on radio.
~ Peter Radiator
"Real music is out there and real people are making it." ~ Webb Wilder |
Edited by - peter radiator on 03/07/2014 11:08:07 |
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rivum
= Cult of Ray =
Canada
265 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2014 : 09:16:26
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that all makes a lot of sense and is a very interesting read.
thanks Peter! |
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Jason
* Dog in the Sand *
1446 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2014 : 11:11:41
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"Alec Eiffel" looks relatively big budget, though it's been a long time since I've seen it.
Fave of the new videos is "Blue Eyed Hexe". It looks like a lot of work went into that one and it's pretty cool. I've watched it more than once just for the video. |
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peter radiator
= Cult of Ray =
USA
653 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2014 : 11:37:46
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Jason,
I agree with you that "Blue-Eyed Hexe" is by far the most impressive video the band has released. TONS of meticulous work went into that, and it not only holds attention, but befits the lyrical tone and overall sound of the song.
You should check out that director's other work. He's done a lot of earlier clips for Grand Duchy and Jeremy Dubs' projects, many of which are completely different in style and substance to "Blue-Eyed Hexe," but all worth watching.
FBF obviously feels very comfortable having this guy collaborate visually with his musical efforts. I hope we see more of his work attached to Pixies stuff in the future...
~ Peter Radiator
"Real music is out there and real people are making it." ~ Webb Wilder |
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The Champ
= Cult of Ray =
Canada
736 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2014 : 13:43:03
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| Great read peter, but I still think that is a totally exaggerated number for any of those low budget videos the pixies shot. I won't buy it until frank comes on here and says he shelled out 100 thousand for monkey gone to heaven. I really don't think they payed their friends anywhere near 100k for here comes your man, for a few hour long shoot. |
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Greens & Blues video
