Shooting the Music
the resurgence of music videos from local bands
Alright, let’s start by having a good laugh about how MTV (formerly standing for Music Television) doesn’t really play music anymore. Now that the joke of the matter is aside, we can start to look at the serious matter of music videos. Back in the early ‘90s, they were all over the place on channels like MTV and VH1 and even locally (if you haven’t seen the video for Another Carnival’s “Still (Enjoy The Ride)” stop reading right now, go find it on YouTube and then come back to this). And even though the appeal of videos seemed to decline with MTV, there’s been a recent resurgence.
“It’s an essential thing to have.” music video director Dan Huiting said. “If you’re a band putting out a record you have to have some kind of video. If you’re a band and you’re trying to market your songs … It can really make your songs go further with the video itself.”
Huiting has his hands in a lot of videos – probably most notably his live performance web series City Of Music, which is distributed by indie music powerhouse Pitchfork.TV, and his work on multiple music videos for Bon Iver’s most recent release. Huiting’s artistic videos (look for his most recent one for the Bon Iver, Bon Iver finale “Beth Rest”) have a throwback, ethereal aesthetic to them.
But the Bon Iver powerhouse isn’t alone on the music video train. The last year saw some professionally produced videos from Eau Clairians Jim Pullman, The Daredevil Christopher Wright and Laarks and DIY efforts from Mr. Pizzy, Wisconsin Built and more.
The blend of two art forms allows artists from two camps to work together. The video for “You Don’t Dump The Boys, They Just Lose Their Turn” by Jim Pullman was produced by local video guru Randy House.
They Just Lose Their Turn” was filmed at The Sea Horse Inn.
“(Jim Pullman) had that song in mind and we met a couple times and talked about different ways we could go about it. We wanted to get the band involved and came up with a little plot.”
The video that turned out had a splendidly ‘70s styled look and was shot at The Seahorse Inn in Eau Claire.
It’s no surprise there’s been such a recent resurgance – communities like YouTube and Vimeo and a vast network of blogs make videos a major way to get your music out there and let it stand out among the constant noise of information that’s on the web. Not to mention, cameras and editing equipment are becoming cheaper and cheaper, to the point you can shoot a decent looking video on your cell phone and edit it on free software.
The Daredevil Christopher Wright put out a video earlier this year with a definitively retro vibe, pairing images from Cold War-era training videos and bandmembers dressed in full ‘50s garb. The video was produced by Adam Wheeler, a UW-Stout grad. Jon Sunde of The Daredevil Christopher Wright said he believes the videos do help to progress the music and get it more attention, but that there’s also an important artistic bump when it comes to videos.
“I think typically the marriage of image and sound can be a really beautiful thing. The potential for what that can do is really powerful and so I think it’s kind of exciting to see how people interpret what you’re doing and ... (how they) craft one particular image they’re associating with your music.”
Just recently, Laarks premiered a video for the first-released song of their upcoming record – Fiat Lux – called “The Human Abstract,” which was directed by Peter Eaton. The music video – or maybe, more appropriately, the short film – showed the high quality of work that is already existing in the Chippewa Valley, as well as the appreciation for it: Scores of people came out for the public premiere of the video. The growing popularity of videos creates a potential for a true video ‘scene’ as artists and videographers continue to work together to create individual pieces of art.
But don’t worry, no matter how many local music videos there are we can still make fun of MTV all we want.
