People criticizes everything that is considered art; paintings, music, opera, movies and the likes, but never have we read criticism of music videos, if there are they certainly don't dominate the domain. But they should be counted as art as well and just as much be criticized like movies and paintings, after all there are outstanding video clips and there are lousy one's.
One should first set criteria's that make a music clip good and make one bad. After that is establish we can distinguish a good music clip from the bad one.
Here is a brief list of points for a good music video:
1. The music video shown should be in entity with the lyrics, if not that would not make any sense.
2. The artist should at least be seen once, so the voice has a face.
3. The music video should possess artistic quality, like good editing, a creative theme, good cinematography or a nice mise-en-scène.
4. The acting skills of the actor in a music video clip should be good or the choreography, depending what the artist settles with.
5. The directors of the video's should also get credit for their art and not only the band or singer.
6. The characteristic of the artist should come forward.
7. If a music video wants to be outstanding it should be unique.
A bad music clip is the opposite to the 7 points mentioned. A further one is, if its not fun to watch and gets boring after the second time.
A recent music video that was quiet good was the clip for "Closer to the Edge" by 30 Second to Mars. The video was directed by Bartholomew Cubbins, Jared Letos director pan name. This of course is the perfect fit for point 6. It could not get more personal, since the band member himself directed the clip. The clip start with a close up of different people talking about faith, moments and life, sending people an important message and cuts to a a shot of Jared Letos side face, where his face is moving towards the microphone. The dark background with the mystifying lightning gives the beginning a surreal effect, cutting back and forth between each member of the band preparing for the show and regular people talking directly into the camera about life. The last guys quote is at the same time the introduction the the beginning of the song, "...don't regret anything you do, cause in the end it makes you who you are." We here the roaring of the audience, see three faces in a fast cut and the stage where a huge cover falls off and the band all together on the stage start with their song. Beautiful introduction with further outlining and details throughout the whole song. The ending is a closing frame. It ends the same was it started with speeches by young people about life, after which like in the movies an end credit follows. The middle section throughout the whole song contains concert footage of their tour, with titles that tell us where the present show took place. The whole scenes are accompanied by writings that documents the scenes shown, like a diary, turning this video into personal diary of the band. When a solo follows we can see and here people talk again. This gives the video not only emotional value but also authenticity. The video clip not only documents the band, but also functions as a message box from people like us to people like us. One could almost say the music video is better then the song, but this might not be the case, after all they are both an item. To sum up this is a wonderful, touching, creative and personal music video.
Check it out and draw you own conclusion.
No comments:
Post a Comment