17 replies to this topic

[Sibko]

http://www.hollywood...tube-has-171586

Michael has caused a stir in today's news feeds with the quote that "YouTube Has Replaced MTV", at SXSW showing off the clips for CIN.

Quote

THR: Just hearing you talk about MTV, I mean I’m aware of it, but something about that made me feel really old. I grew up on that—the shoestring videos and the first concepts that people started using back then.  

Stipe: Right. But that’s been replaced by YouTube. Its moment has come and gone, and that’s good and fine.

THR: You’ve always been tied to these art communities anyway. That was always a part of your creative life. So it sounds like more of just a semantic switch. You’re not making music videos anymore, you’re making visual art pieces.

Stipe: Well, we started making art films because R.E.M.’s reaction to MTV was, “Fuck no, I’m not going to lip sync, it’s stupid, and I’m not going to dance around like an idiot, we’re not going to have dancing girls behind us, that’s stupid. So what do we do?” For our first semi-hit song, “Fall on Me,” I shot black and white, 16mm footage of a rock quarry, flipped it upside down, played it backwards without an edit and put the words to the song over it, and we got played on MTV with that piece more than anything that we had done prior. That was 1986. That was six years into MTV and six years into the band. We kind of continued with that, and then in the ‘90s and the Aughts we did a few—and I accept our mistakes and our failures along with our triumphs and our glories—but we did a few music videos that are music videos with us dancing and the whole thing. It is what it is. It was right for that moment—or maybe it was wrong for that moment—but we are much better at making art films, I think.

[Limnophilia]

I honestly cannot remember the last time I watched MTV. 10 yrs ago?

[chrome3d]

I appreciate what Michael says here. Still many of their videos after Fall On Me were quite conventional with lipsynching and with sometimes silly dancing. Look for the video of Thom Yorke vs. Stipe dance battle in Youtube for example.

Bang and Blame, Strange Currencies, Tongue, The Great Beyond, Man On The Moon, Drive just to name a few lipsynching-vids. Especially Shiny Happy People with dancing too, but maybe it was all to underline the silliness of the song. Come on, Michael, you are guilty of lipsynching on many occasions and not all the REM-videos are avantgarde art. It would be kinda cool if they were.

[Driver Nate]

chrome3d, on 26 March 2011 - 07:53 AM, said:

Come on, Michael, you are guilty of lipsynching on many occasions and not all the REM-videos are avantgarde art.

He doesn't deny any of this in the interview. As big of a deal as it was at the time, Stipe lip synching for "Losing My Religion" didn't cause me to lose any respect for them or him. As for the whole "YouTube has replaced MTV" thing that's not any sort of big revelation as it's been pretty obvious over the last several years. MTV hasn't been a "music channel" in a very long time and in lot of ways, never really was other than in name (sort of like now). When I finally got cable access in 1989 I couldn't believe just how shitty MTV was and wondered what all the praise was about. Thankfully, it actually did have some redeeming qualities in shows such as the Rockumentaries, 120 Minutes, Postmodern MTV, etc. The rest of the time it was the same shitty videos on the hour with very few exceptions.

[chrome3d]

Yeah, Michael admits in the end that he has done a lot of ordinary videos. I think they were right for the moment. The band would have been too difficult for wider audience if many of the videos had been in "Walk It Back-style".

It will be cool to see where they go in the future (if there is a future). With CIN-vids there is something new and it would be good to see them (Michael) push that further in the next album.

[yamman]

Dear Michael,

If you are reading this, lip-synching doesn't necessarily equal a bad video. You of all people should know that, when you use it right and tastefully, it's not cheesy and helps convey the message of the song. Just because it feels fake to you when you do it in the video, doesn't mean it feels fake to the viewer!

Take movies as an example. Are movies where looping is used (almost all) worse or less true than ones where the dialogue from the set was used? -I- don't think so. Once again, it's up to the skill of the actor and filmmakers to ensure the intent comes through.

There are equally as many good 'art videos' in your catalogue as there are 'lip synching' videos - the quality has nothing to do with whether or not it's got lip-synching! (By that same token, there are just as many 'art' and 'lip-synch' videos in there that aren't as timeless and that also has nothing to do with whether you're miming or not). Do what feels right for the piece!

Just think... if you didn't allow 'miming' (in some form or another), we never would have got any of these (arguably some of your best) videos:
So. Central Rain
LOSING MY RELIGION
Shiny Happy People (yes, it's a great video!)
MAN ON THE MOON
WHAT'S THE FREQUENCY, KENNETH?
Bang And Blame
Electrolite
IMITATION OF LIFE

By that same token, you have many great 'no-performance' videos too:
FALL ON ME
It's The End Of The World As We Know It
ORANGE CRUSH
LOW
Nightswimming
DRIVE
Daysleeper
It Happened Today

All these videos work because they feel 'right' for the piece. Would MAN ON THE MOON work as well with just the shots of photos being passed in front of the camera? Your performance in that video adds to the feeling of 'storytelling' and 'inclusiveness' of the song. Same with the end of EVERYBODY HURTS. The way you used lip-synching in these videos was restrained and with purpose, which made them arguably much more effective than if those sequences had have been cut!

If we get no more lip-synching videos for the rest of your (hopefully long) career then so be it, but just know this fan thinks you've used it to great effect in the past before and you should give it a chance again in the future if the piece could benefit from it!

Sincerely,

Heath "I-don't-care-if-it's-lip-synched, who does?" Smith

[Locomotive8]

Sibko, on 25 March 2011 - 09:10 PM, said:

Stipe: (...)we are much better at making art films, I think.

No, Michael, I'm afraid you're not.

[simonfox]

yamman, on 26 March 2011 - 08:38 AM, said:

Dear Michael,

If you are reading this, lip-synching doesn't necessarily equal a bad video. You of all people should know that, when you use it right and tastefully, it's not cheesy and helps convey the message of the song. Just because it feels fake to you when you do it in the video, doesn't mean it feels fake to the viewer!

Take movies as an example. Are movies where looping is used (almost all) worse or less true than ones where the dialogue from the set was used? -I- don't think so. Once again, it's up to the skill of the actor and filmmakers to ensure the intent comes through.

There are equally as many good 'art videos' in your catalogue as there are 'lip synching' videos - the quality has nothing to do with whether or not it's got lip-synching! (By that same token, there are just as many 'art' and 'lip-synch' videos in there that aren't as timeless and that also has nothing to do with whether you're miming or not). Do what feels right for the piece!

Just think... if you didn't allow 'miming' (in some form or another), we never would have got any of these (arguably some of your best) videos:
So. Central Rain
LOSING MY RELIGION
Shiny Happy People (yes, it's a great video!)
MAN ON THE MOON
WHAT'S THE FREQUENCY, KENNETH?
Bang And Blame
Electrolite
IMITATION OF LIFE

By that same token, you have many great 'no-performance' videos too:
FALL ON ME
It's The End Of The World As We Know It
ORANGE CRUSH
LOW
Nightswimming
DRIVE
Daysleeper
It Happened Today

All these videos work because they feel 'right' for the piece. Would MAN ON THE MOON work as well with just the shots of photos being passed in front of the camera? Your performance in that video adds to the feeling of 'storytelling' and 'inclusiveness' of the song. Same with the end of EVERYBODY HURTS. The way you used lip-synching in these videos was restrained and with purpose, which made them arguably much more effective than if those sequences had have been cut!

If we get no more lip-synching videos for the rest of your (hopefully long) career then so be it, but just know this fan thinks you've used it to great effect in the past before and you should give it a chance again in the future if the piece could benefit from it!

Sincerely,

Heath "I-don't-care-if-it's-lip-synched, who does?" Smith

I agree with everything you've said Heath. Absolutely spot on.

Man on the Moon is one of my favourite videos of all time. It has a timeless quality - the black and white medium, the desert scenery, along with Micheal's emotional performance. It managed to find the balance between having an 'arty' feel and being a traditional music video. The lip-synching gave it a link to the song and helped feel like Michael was telling a story. Unlike 'Walk it Back' where I felt totally disconnected from the video and felt no link between the video and the song. Basically, it sparked no emotion in me.

It is very possible to create intelligent videos that have lip-synching - R.E.M. have proved that time and time again. Yes, there are plenty of dumb lip-synching videos which I'd never care to see again (eg. think of many of those spandex laden 'hard rock' videos of the late 1980s) but it is not the lip-synching which makes them 'dumb'.

And yes, Heath, many of those 'no-performance' videos were great too.

[MurmursAdministrator]

My friends at YouTube are very happy with this article.

As am I.

[collapse into now]

Does Warner still refuse to post videos to YouTube and demand removal when others add them?

[Remixomatosys]

full interview

oops, already posted

[MurmursAdministrator]

collapse into now, on 27 March 2011 - 12:40 AM, said:

Does Warner still refuse to post videos to YouTube and demand removal when others add them?

No, they don't. Most of the take downs are automatic systems though.

The YouTube / Music Company relationship is a storied mess really.

[mem_ory]

The best R.E.M. videos are the ones that are 'arty' but are also highly re-watchable and closely match the music:  Losing My Religion, Man on the Moon, Everybody Hurts, What's the Frequency Kenneth...  The video for Walk it Back for example feels nothing like the song and hence it only has the controversy to play off of which IMO weakens it.

[MurmursAdministrator]

mem_ory, on 27 March 2011 - 08:32 PM, said:

The best R.E.M. videos are the ones that are 'arty' but are also highly re-watchable and closely match the music:  Losing My Religion, Man on the Moon, Everybody Hurts, What's the Frequency Kenneth...  The video for Walk it Back for example feels nothing like the song and hence it only has the controversy to play off of which IMO weakens it.

Disagree. I like the arty videos more. Low, Country Feedback, etc.

[chrome3d]

"Stipe: It’s stupid. It’ll come out at some point. Sometimes these things take years. [laughs] But what I did when I saw this thing that my sister was working on, I was so blown away by it because it really in some way references many of the themes on this record in terms of perspective, vanishing point and horizon. But it’s this kind of 1971 version of Tron is the way I think of it. Because that’s what it looks like to me. To people who are architecture interns, they’re going to hate me. Because it’s what they work with 8 to 10 hours a day. And it’s just this different take on AutoCAD."


Now this sounds intriguing to me. I would like to see Discoverer-video done with AutoCAD. Go, Michael, go. Autocad is an underused piece of software in music videos!

[hikerdeb]

I don't know how you define "lip-synching," but I think in most videos where Michael is supposed to look like he's singing, he is not merely mouthing the words. What you HEAR on the video is the version of the song from the album, but it is obvious when you watch Michael that he was actually singing while it was being filmed. (This is especially noticeable in the "Losing My Religion" video.)

Also, why does anyone think it's controversial that Michael said YouTube has replaced MTV? Everybody knows that's the truth. MTV hasn't played music videos in years.

[Driver Nate]

hikerdeb, on 28 March 2011 - 10:14 AM, said:

I don't know how you define "lip-synching," but I think in most videos where Michael is supposed to look like he's singing, he is not merely mouthing the words. What you HEAR on the video is the version of the song from the album, but it is obvious when you watch Michael that he was actually singing while it was being filmed. (This is especially noticeable in the "Losing My Religion" video.)

It's also how the clip for "So. Central Rain" was done except his vocal was actually used in the video.

hikerdeb, on 28 March 2011 - 10:14 AM, said:

Also, why does anyone think it's controversial that Michael said YouTube has replaced MTV? Everybody knows that's the truth. MTV hasn't played music videos in years.

That was my point, exactly.

[Burleigh]

Locomotive8, on 26 March 2011 - 11:19 AM, said:

No, Michael, I'm afraid you're not.

I was thinking the same thing.