Internet heals the video star

It wasn't long ago that the music video was on life support.
MTV - holding its 27th annual Video Music Awards tomorrow - phased out videos in favour of reality programming and other shows that attracted better ratings. At the same time, the music industry was collapsing and slashed budgets no longer had room for elaborate clips.
But recently, the music video has had a revival. Watching music videos has become a central aspect of internet usage. Music blogs and social media have greased the channels, facilitating the quick, easy spreading of videos, especially those with arresting or controversial visuals. People even buy clips on iTunes.
Lady Gaga and Beyonce go on a scantily clad murderous rampage with the nearly 10-minute Telephone; MGMT wanders through the desert with a digitally created creature in Congratulations; Erykah Badu strips while strolling the path of President John Kennedy assassination in Window Seat; MIA depicts a war on terror against redheads in Born Free.
All of those videos exploded on the internet. Cee Lo's recent and unprintable hit (titled Forget You for radio) went viral with a video of only its lyrics. And Beyonce's Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It) became so iconic it had then President-elect Barack Obama imitating the hand choreography.
"We're entering another golden era for music videos," says Saul Austerlitz, the author of Money for Nothing: A History of the Music Video from the Beatles to the White Stripes. "They've become part of the cultural discourse again."
Today's audiences can be enormous. Shakira, who last year debuted a music video on Facebook, was "blown away" when her video for the official song of the World Cup, Waka Waka (This One's for Africa) - a colorful mix of dancing and soccer star cameos - was nearing 100 million views on YouTube.
"It can take on a life of its own online," she said. The video has gone on to be watched by more than 173 million people - the fourth most-viewed video on YouTube. In fact, four of the five most-viewed clips on YouTube are music videos released in the last year. (Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga top the charts.)
"If it wasn't for YouTube, the online video space would not be where it is today," said David Kohl, executive vice-president of sales and customer operations at music website Vevo.
At the centre of music video's earlier, headier times was Hype Williams, but he grew disillusioned with the commercialisation of music videos and the recycling of imagery. He was coaxed back into music video by Kanye West and has remained active, including recently directing the Jay-Z's Empire State of Mind.
"It's a different time," says Williams. "It's an opportunity to find it all over again."
An Arcade Fire video entitled The Wilderness Downtown and released this month is set to the band's song We Used to Wait. It's a video particularly suited to the medium of the web.
At the website dedicated to the film (www. thewilderness-downtown.com), a viewer inputs his or her childhood home address.
The film starts with a hooded figure running down golden suburban streets. Another browser window opens full of fluttering birds. Others pop open, too, that use Google Street View and Google Maps to show the old neighbourhood. At the end of the film, the viewer is urged to write a letter to his or her young self.
Within days, the site received some 20 million hits and three million unique views. The video, made possible by the programming language HTML5, was directed by Chris Milk, who has previously done more traditional videos for Gnarls Barkley, West and others. He this year released The Johnny Cash Project, a web-only video that gathers portraits of Cash submitted by fans and sets them to the song Ain't No Grave.
"Because we're in this transitional moment, we've all been making music videos as if we're making them for a television broadcast," says Milk.
"But really the web is a totally different canvas from broadcast. It allows for a whole different set of rules."
Many of the new, web-oriented videos are made possible financially because of advancements in technology, especially DSLR cameras, which are relatively inexpensive and provide excellent production value. Comedian Tom Sharpling used such a camera to shoot the recent Ted Leo and the Pharmacists video for Bottled in Cork, a parody of jukebox musicals made for less than $7000.
The video premiered not on a music blog, but the comedy site Funny Or Die. It's been watched by more than 105,000, which Leo notes is several times more than those who have bought his latest album, The Brutalist Bricks.
"People are able to present images that to them relate to the music they're making, as opposed to feeling like they need to present images with quick cuts, flashy, hi-fi performance shots and pose-y things that for a while were dictated by wanting to get played on MTV," Leo says.