I remember being involved in a music video in the 1980s. At the time I was programming director at New York’s The Kitchen and we would rent out the space to video shoots to help pay the rent. The space got rented out to a big video with a budget in the mid-six-figures. They took both floors, built for a few days, shot for a few days, and envelopes of petty cash were handed out like candy. A few years later my partner and I produced a couple of music videos and wondered how we’d pull it off on only $100,000.

Now, music video budgets have shrunken even further just as have the budgets of indie films. Here’s Estevan Oriol, who has directed pieces for D12, Cypress Hill, and Blink 182, among others, decrying the deflationary effects of music video’s new guard.