The Wall Street Journal has a piece up by John Jurgensen about declining budgets in the music video industry, a development that has something to do with both music business economics as well as new modes of viewing and distribution. From the article: But music executives also say the big video budgets of the 1990s are generally unnecessary, now that videos are most often watched on small screens like laptops and video iPods. Reality TV programming and the success of amateur “viral” videos that viewers watch and email to friends have changed the expectations of young viewers, says Monte Lipman, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 23, 2006CNET covers Youtube: Executives from heavyweights such as Yahoo, America Online and Turner Broadcasting were buzzing about YouTube’s sudden success at the Digital Hollywood conference here this week. Even though it’s not clear exactly how YouTube will make money, no company generated as much excitement at the gathering of Hollywood studios, electronics manufacturers and Internet media companies….
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 31, 2006In Simon Reynold’s great history of post-punk, Rip It Up and Start Again, the critic describes trips taken by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt (who, with Eno, co-created Oblique Strategies, a set of simple directives on playing cards — example: “Don’t avoid what is easy” — intended as creative aids) to the British art school Watford in the ’70s where Eno would help students with projects. On some nights Eno and Schmidt would give Colin Newman, founding member of Wire (pictured), a lift, and Newman’s quote is a good description of how one generation supports another when it comes to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 31, 2006The guys who run the new music/MP3 blog Good Weather for Air Strikes have launched a new blog devoted solely to music video downloads called Videoteque. Named in homage to Radiohead, the site features no streaming video, just downloads, many in iPod-ready MP4 format. First up, yes, a bunch of Radiohead clips by such directors as Michel Gondry and Jamie Thraves.
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 26, 2006A depressing element of the music filesharing revolution has been the suggestion by its proponents that tour income and t-shirt sales will be the new revenue model for bands losing the royalties they would have (in a perfect world) received from consumers buying their music. I’ve wondered, what if a band or musician didn’t want to spend his life touring and just wanted to make records? Obviously a similar challenge is about to face filmmakers as increasing storage capacities and new digital download services arise to reshape the way films are distributed. Already sites like the Google Video Store and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 23, 2006Jim Jarmusch has directed a video for The Raconteurs, a band featuring Jack White of the White Stripes and Brendon Benson. It’s in his grainy Year of the Horse mode and it can be found here.
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 20, 2006Harmony Korine has directed a new Cat Power video, “Living Proof.” There’s a short piece and a comments page over at Antville. (His previous clip for Bonnie “Prince Billy,” aka Will Oldham, star of Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy, is here.)
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 5, 2006For fans of Jan Wozencroft, the artist whose evocative and mysterious landscape photos adorn CD covers by the likes of Christian Fennesz and others on the Touch label, the folks at the U.K. music company are offering free 20 downloadable Wozencroft pics, formatted for use as screensavers on a variety of differently-sized computer screens. It’s the label’s 20th anniversary and a bunch of other special stuff is planned for the year.
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 15, 2006In the last Filmmaker I wrote about New Order’s recent video compilation and the various “artist-directed” videos that producer and filmmaker Michael Shamberg commissioned for the band over the years. In the piece, Shamberg announced that a website would be up detailing the project, but, due to health issues — Shamberg took ill in London this summer and was hospitalized for three months — the site was delayed. Now, Shamberg has emailed to say that he’s better and that Kinoteca is online. Over the next few months he will be gradually putting up info on all the New Order video […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 29, 2005Filmmakers looking to score quick tunes from up-and-coming bands for their indie flick often don’t understand the realities of licensing pre-recorded music and wonder why their producers can’t clear a song on the fly. Here, then, is some straight talk from Sub Pop Records, the label that spawned Nirvana and which has a handy $500 festival rights quote but also plenty of provisos that filmmakers need to follow: “A sync license for a Sub Pop artist will run you $500, half of which goes to Publishing, the other half of which goes to Sub Pop. If you do not want […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 29, 2005