Re: embarassing videos

[lishka@cernvax.cern.ch (christopher lishka)]

[Disclaimer: all that I write below should be prefaced with "in my
humble opinion"...]

In <m0kWCz5-00023sC@chinet.chi.il.us> katefans@chinet.chi.il.us (Chris n Vickie) writes:

>Chris here,

Hey, I like your name!  There seem to be quite a few Chris' in this
newsgroup.


>   I can assume that you hadn't seen these videos at the time of their
>release.

You are dead-on.  I saw them earlier this year (when me and my NTSC
vcr were still in the same countery ;-( ), a long time after they were
released. 


>I can assure you that they were well above the average dreck
>of the time.

Possibly.  Being above dreck does not make them good in my mind.  Good
stuff stands out over time; bad stuff is bad stuff when you first see
it and remains bad stuff.  There are of course things in between,
including stuff that originally was good but sours over time, and
stuff that initially seemed bad but seems to get much better.

I think Ms. Bush's early videos simply were not all that good.  They
may lie in the "initially good but not good now" category, but I still
don't really like them.  I *am* judging them based on works in film
(which is a hobby of mine), and not just other videos.

Incidentally, the first time I heard Kate Bush (as a pre-teen lad,
when she appeared live on Saturday Night) I couldn't stand her voice.
Now I think she is great (same with Elvis Costello).  So she falls in
the "initially bad but got much better" category.  Maybe ten years
down the line I will like her early videos more.  Right now I think
they are pretty silly.


>If you were to look at these antiques from an MTV-jaded perspective,

But one can also look at great old films from the silent-movie days
and still see genius in them.  There was also a lot of dreck produced
to sell to the masses back then too, but it has been forgotten.  Kate
Bush's early videos just don't do anything for me.


>Just to say "Keef" was an above average director producing above average
>music videos, often in less than one day.

Roger Corman has made zillions of movies, often with up-and-coming
stars and directors.  However, I doubt that most of his movies would
be considered very good.  Just because Keef of Keefco made a lot of
quick videos doesn't mean they are good.  But, not having seen any of
Keef's other work, I will not form any opinion of his work as a whole,
except that I find his early collaborations with Kate Bush do not seem
that good.


>  That's (as near as we can tell) "The Sprit of Female Vengance". The video
>was the end result of weeks of touring European TV stations lip-syncing the
>song, dragging around what appears to be a bass bigger than she is. (Actually
>it's a cello, she's _really_ tiny!) The story deals with a repressed wife
>who suspects her husband of cheating, arranges a tryst with him in costume...

The details about how it was made seem very interesting.  I still
don't like it that much though.  As a visual statement for the song
(and I really like the song), I think the video is rather clunky in
its imagery.  The song, on the other hand, is much more subtle.


>  Kate is wearing a flesh-colored body suit.

OK, I couldn't really tell if she was nude (and I was looking *REAL*
close ;-).  


>  Our theory about _Love and Anger_ was re-posted not too long ago.
>It's _intended_ to be cliched.

Hmmm, I must've missed this posting.  I really like the song, but the
video imagery doesn't do anything for me.


>  Videos are always made to sell a song.

I disagree, and I think it has to do with what you define as a video.
Remember, people (including musical artists) *did* create visual
images to go with music before the likes of MTV came along.  Back in
the "dark ages" ;-) people did a lot of stuff with videos that was not
used to sell the music.  One of the best videos is the animated
cartoon that was created for Cat Steven's "Moon Shadow" (a lovely
cartoon, if anyone is interested, one that you could even show to
young children).  The Beatles movie _Yellow Submarine_ could be looked
at as a whole collection of videos, with an actual story connecting
them.

My point is that as long as film has been mated to sound, there have
been artists who have tried to get the two to work together.  Only
recently has a big market for five-minute film clips made to be viewed
with some hit song been created, and the results labeled "videos".


>The record company would not give an artist money to make a video, if
>they felt that they couldn't use it to sell that song.

Sure, but that does *NOT* mean we should lower our standards on what a
good video is.

A good example from the film world is Andrei Tarkovsky, a Russian
director who made stunning films on miniscule budgets.  There are
zillions of great independent films out there, all made with little
money.  Sure, Kate Bush and Keef made videos that were cheap and quick
(or, in programming lingo, "quick and dirty"), but that does not
figure into whether or not the video is good.  There are also likely
video directors who have made cheap videos that were good, but I don't
think the Bush/Keef team qualifies.


>If the video is good enough to stand on it's own as a piece
>of art, great. But that is gravy (or in Kate's case, marmalade). This isn't
>to say that a great artist couldn't make a video for it's own sake, but not
>with money from the squids.

Exactly.  The fact that Kate Bush's early videos were made cheaply and
quickly does not mean they are good.  I will give her credit for
making them, and trying to make them into something a bit better than
the average video, but I still don't think they are good.  I *do*
think that some of her later videos are great, though (e.g.
"Cloudbusting", "Experiment IV"). 

In the end I am simply applying my same standards to Ms. Bush's videos
as I am her music.  I like her music because it is often rich in
detail and suble imagery, and the subject matter is not the
main-stream "let me screw you tonight" shit that I dislike.  I dislike
her early videos because the visual imagery seems clunky and the
videos do not seem rich in visual detail.  It *seems* to me that she
put a lot more time into her early music than her early videos (this
may or may not be true).  However, the videos she *seems* to have
spent more time on I like more.

						.oO Chris Oo.
-- 
 Christopher Lishka                  Smiling as the shit comes down
 Wisconsin Group, CERN               You can tell a man from what he has to say
 lishka@cernvax.cern.ch                                        -- Crowded House