Vimeo killed the Video Star – Anaïs Croze
The Buggles song “Video Killed the Radio Star,” was the firing shot that launched MTV. It was the first video they ever played, christening a new era of music and TV. It’s technically not the “first” music video, think Richard Lester’s work, but it’s the first in terms of MTV and that was huge. It inspired a genre of television, and spawned a whole new generation of videomakers. But the kingdom only lasted so long before MTV drowned in a sea of reality tv shows.
For awhile there where a lot of people talking about the death of the music video, this was right around 2005 or so. I remember because a few years earlier when I was in school, the believed path to commercials and movies was music videos. Do enough cool stuff in music video, then someone will give you some commercials. After you’ve made it there and massaged enough agency egos, someone else would give you a movie! You could buy a Ferrari, hang out with super models, and make Michael Bay jealous you found a parking spot in the fire zone before he did at Spagos. That last part is kind of true, I saw Michael Bay park in a fire zone in a bright yellow Ferrari.
The death of music video, it was coming like a filmmakers rapture. All of us PA’s that were counting on our one hit video to save us were losing hope. And then something unheard of happened, and that was called Youtube. Anything goes on the Youtube of that time, and that translated into a music video democracy! Quality meant nothing, as long as it gets seen. As we know, the quality got better and new sites opened up like Vimeo to display high resolution versions of work we really cared about. A result of the new outlets was that the dying music video industry realized that Youtube and Vimeo could be the final viewing spot for their products, and to put another nail in the video coffin, they slashed budgets. It’s not like MTV was ever going to show that video you made on Quintero Street anyway, unless you somehow got Beyonce to appear in it. What was meant to be our savior, Youtube, actually set the music video director back a bit in my opinion. It lowered the bar and expectations. Labels would almost be crazy to give a no name director anything over $5000 to do a video. But we kept making videos despite the budget and video pushes on, much like radio did after MTV. The internet gives new life to projects long forgotten, like the one I’m about to tell you about.
The version of The Buggles song that we shot was commissioned by Keith over at Setanta Records out of London. Keith was a good friend of mine that I met the few times that I had gone over to England to work with the band Kennedy. Even though he had stopped working with them at the time we made this, he and I had remained in contact and I was staying at his place on one of my trips. Keith had come home late one night after cycling the entire city of London, and found me awake watching Paper Moon around 4am…I couldn’t sleep. It was raining outside, and he broke open a bottle of wine. We sat at a big wooden table watching the grey sun come up over his garden, listening to music. By the second bottle of wine, he was telling me of a classical music project he was working on. The idea was to take pop songs, and give them an orchestral treatment. “Video Killed the Radio Star,” was one of those songs. Keith had convinced the wonderful French songstress Anaïs Croze to do the vocals. If you don’t know Anaïs’ work, you may have heard her sing with the band Nouvalle Vague. They have some pretty cool videos that I love, check a few of them here & here. These vids aren’t necessarily her singing, but they’re great!
In my morning drunkedness I had agreed to make a video for the song upon returning back to California. Keith gave me about $1500 dollars I think. The catch was that Anaïs would not be in the video, and we would just use an actor. So I got my friend Nicky to play the part of the girl. In true Godard fashion, I thought all you really need is a cute girl. The idea was that we’d give her a portable turn table and she’d go to the streets playing music for people. The crew would be slightly hidden and using long lens, we’d film the reactions people had to the music. Since I only had a CD of the song, the actual record we used was the theme song to “A Man and a Woman,” by Francis Lai.
Most of it was shot documentary style, since we didn’t plan the people we’d encounter. The only stuff I did plan was the guy dancing at the train station, and the musicians she meets at the end. We took my Arri 16mm camera to the streets, and shot every reaction along the way! It was a really fun day, and I was happy with results. Alfredo Ritta, who edited the video told me he was surprised by the honest reactions that people gave us, that in turn made it pretty easy to edit. In the end Keith didn’t like the finished product, and in fact didn’t use it to promote the song at all. He told me he was expecting something, “a little more like Everybody Hurts.” I love that video, but I assume R.E.M. must of spent at least a quarter million or more making it. So the project was shelved, and never released…until about a week ago. I decided that I was going to post it on Vimeo. I know I have the digibeta dailies here, but the only finished edit I could find is a 320X240 old web version. No matter, it needed to be seen.
Well, the video has taken a life of its own. In the week that it was posted on Vimeo, the website for MTV Brazil has picked it up and quite a few other music sites have as well. People seem to enjoy it, proving that the world didn’t need another “Everybody Hurts.” They would have been happy with something shot on short ends on a cloudy day, and envisioned over wine. Music video is not dead, its just taking a new turn.
Director of Photography: Rod Hassler
