June 25, 2014

When music videos were shot on film

Checking out the videos on Totally '80s today on VH1 Classic, I was struck by how common it was to shoot on film back then, despite the fact that video technology was not only available but cheaper than film, and already becoming the standard for shooting news and pornography.

Shouldn't music videos have joined in with other lesser media like reporting and porno, and chosen to shoot on video? They could have, but then they wouldn't have that stylized look that film gives.

Video is shot at a higher frame rate (capturing more motion per second), gives more desaturated colors, and has a more restricted dynamic range of brightness levels. It's more photorealistic and ordinary, making it better suited to media where the viewer wants that "you are there" feeling -- such as news reporting and porno.

For music videos, this format was generally chosen when the idea was to put the viewer in the audience of an ordinary, real-world live performance by the band. It's as if a documentary crew went to shoot a small gig that the band was playing that night.

Below are screenshots from the videos for "Any Way You Want It" by Journey, "Start Me Up" by the Rolling Stones, and "I Want Candy" by Bow Wow Wow, all of which were shot on video. (Click on the song titles to see the full videos.) No real reason for these particular examples, except that they're fresh in my mind from today, and are all from the early '80s -- to show how early the format was adopted for the ordinary/documentary approach. (Click to enlarge.)


Film gives lusher colors, more striking dark-bright contrast, more texture of the medium itself (film grain), and stylized motion by shooting fewer frames per second.

Here are some screenshots from "Papa Don't Preach" by Madonna, "Rhythm of the Night" by DeBarge, and "Love in an Elevator" by Aerosmith. No real reason for these either, except that they're fresh in my mind, and are from the second half of the '80s -- to show how film was still going strong well after it had been abandoned for video in news and porno. It didn't even need to be a narrative video like the one by Madonna. The other two feature a lot of live performance footage, but the setting is supposed to be larger than life and out of the ordinary, requiring a more stylized look.


Now that music videos are so rarely made, let alone watched, and even then are shot on digital, you wonder what effect it will have on the visual expectations of today's young generation. Will they expect the sky to be white rather than blue, will they find black shadows too dark, and will they feel comfortable only with either washed-out or caricatured/campy colors rather than ones that are warm and lush?

After all, it's not as though they have replaced music videos with another medium that has a film-y look and feel. The major new visual medium for them is video games, which they prefer to look more pale, blandly colored, and evenly lit than a news broadcast.

11 comments:

  1. Video killed the radio star before killing itself. Although, Open by Rhye and Leave A Light On by Marble Sounds are examples in which it appears that digital video has been used effectively.

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  2. Not being a fan of music videos as a medium, I have little to say. But I did find it interesting that Molly Lambert agrees with you on the cultural impact of 9/11 (except she views it as a bad thing).

    I guess I do have something tangential to add. I started watching "Carnivale" and reading discussion about it at the A. V. Club. Someone there mentioned it was shot on film rather than digital, which would be very unusual now but I'm not sure how common in 2003-2005. I wouldn't have guessed it myself. I did notice how different the three parts of the Red Riding/Year of Our Lord trilogy looked*, but some of that was deliberate on the part of the directors.
    *They were shot, respectively with 16 mm film with an aspect ratio of 16:9, 35 mm film with an anamorphic aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and a Red One digital camera.

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  3. "I started watching "Carnivale" and reading discussion about it at the A. V. Club."

    heh, I was just thinking of watching that again. how do you like it?

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  4. Tried to post once, guess my comment got eaten. I first tried watching it a year or so ago and didn't care enough after the pilot to continue. But I kept hearing people who watched the whole series say it was good, and it's only 24 episodes total so I decided to go for it.

    It has one of the best opening-credits sequences, beaten only by Game of Thrones. I really like the Brother Justin stuff. The show focuses more on the carny side, but I just don't find any of them that interesting. However, the two-part "Babylon" & "Pick a Number" story was fantastic. The AV Club's first recap calls it "the ultimate hangout drama", and given my distaste for the shows deemed "hangout sitcoms"*, that doesn't bode well, but I plan on continuing onto the next/final season.
    *Parks & Rec is mentioned as in-between and while I've enjoyed much of what little I've seen, I don't have any particular desire to watch more like I did with 30 Rock or Arrested Development.

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  5. Wow, I hadn't seen Madonna's video in at least 15 years. Excellent cinematography, cool story, emotional, everything. You clearly see the difference between Madonna's video (man, she should really hang it up after comparing her now to then) and Journey's: it looks like Journey shot an episode of Wayne's World in their basement.

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  6. The YouTube clips don't really show how nice film looks either, although they don't really make video look a whole lot worse. When I saw these yesterday, it was a digital cable signal on a CRT TV set. My computer monitor is a CRT, so it must be the compression or some aspect of flash video that makes them look noticeably weaker on YouTube.

    Too bad you can't see them on a good old analog, uncompressed TV signal anymore. The best you can do is DVDs, or try to find some by digital restorers / curators on YouTube.

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  7. One thing that makes it a little harder to pick out film vs. digital in the 21st century is that they use much faster film stock, giving it a brighter and grainier look, and so making it look somewhat more like digital video, which is marked by light shadows, blown-out highlights, and lower resolution than film.

    Fast film stocks also "freeze action" into a crisp rather than blurred image within a single frame, which may produce a similar effect to video's high frame rate -- less stylized motion.

    Your favorites as recently as the '70s and most of the '80s were shot on incredibly slow film, compared to today. The differences are subtle, not as though those favorites are unwatchable, but they are darker, finer-grained, and motion-blurrier than today's.

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  8. "Now that music videos are so rarely made, let alone watched, and even then are shot on digital, you wonder what effect it will have on the visual expectations of today's young generation. Will they expect the sky to be white rather than blue, will they find black shadows too dark, and will they feel comfortable only with either washed-out or caricatured/campy colors rather than ones that are warm and lush?"

    I may sound like Scrooge here, but I don't think the younger generation has any visual expectations. They want to see lots of changing frames in a video, hot girls, muscular guys, and plenty of conspicuous consumption (fast cars, expensive champagne, etc.).

    This also applies to movies: compare the lushness of the visible spectrum in "Reality Bites" to present-day movies. I was blown away at how beautiful the former looked, how it really drew me more into the story.

    My girlfriend is 25, and we were recently on a weeklong trip in the Alps, taking pictures with her pocket digital camera. When we showed the pictures to her parents a few weeks later, I was aghast at how the camera completely changed the sky color from blue to white. The colors looked completely bleached, not lush at all.

    She didn't think it was a big deal though. I was getting upset because it was a big trip and I could've brought my analog SLR and really captured the moment. Unfortunately I haven't used the SLR in 10 years and I've lost my touch.

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  9. Music videos are still made, but because their audience is so small now, not much production goes into it. Those foolish reality shows have replaced them. MTV and VH-1 have morning shows devoted to videos. Big time fans of the videos can go to the fansites of their favorite groups or they can watch them on Youtube.

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  10. The Wayne's World comment is apt. Seemed like they were going for comedy, the opposite of the emotion oin the song. I didn't watch it all the way through but I didn't see a single girl in the Journey video. Also, I'd forgotten how over the top their hairstyles were. Even in 1980 young guys weren't wearing that on the street.

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  11. since record companies sell so few albums today they no longer have the funds to produce decent videos. Musical acts need to make more of their income from concerts , where they typically lip sing the songs....

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