Metal Bands' music video styles

[rubyeye]

This is something I'd like to get the AMV input on, as a community of "music video" editors... I've been noticing there are only a handful of music video styles every metal artists seems to employ.


'Garage Band' performance:
This is where all we see is the band jamming away on some kind of stage setup or location and just playing the song. Editing is done with lots of fast cuts to each member trying to mix it up and look interesting.

'Home Video/Concert/Recording' performance:
Here we see all kinds of candid camera footage of the band behind the scenes and playing before a live audience or in the recording booth.

Cut-Away Narratives:
This is a kind of music video most popular with movie soundtracks. What you have is, again, the band playing on a stage or location and occasionally cutting away to scenes of the movie. Another variation of this is when they construct some kind of narrative revolving around the band who may or may not interact with the action/scene/story.

Experimental:
These are the rare gems that do something completely different like animation or special effects and which rarely (or at least in a unique way) show the band members. Some videos may also mix various styles.


The choice of format often dictates the budget and time involved to make a video. It's obviously cheaper to simply shoot a band playing on stage and editing that footage than planning out a story or using special effects. But it still irkes me that of all the technical capabilities at our disposal, the vast majority of music videos are still relegated to recyclying these styles. Why is that? And what are your thoughts on Music Videos in general?

[Bote]

The only regular music vids I like watching are the ones involving sexy babes dancing to the rhytm (like majority or Beyonce's vids). I've seen one really good NoDoubt's vid and the style reminds a lot of AMV's (fast fading, black flashes, motion settings) and needless is to say that it appealed to me a lot. Sometimes there might be really good experimental ones, like what Gorillaz or Daft Punk did. It's very interesting at least.

As for metal music vids, they all blow. Like you said rubyeye the editing always centers arround band members knocking their instruments. Not really something I'd want to watch over and over.

[CerebralAssamite]

Our definitions of metal are very different here, the only metal videos I see consist of a vocalist who has extremely long hair and shakes his head up and down while holding a mic or nothing at all starring into the camera and growling/screaming their heads off.

Guitars: Look at the floor and shake their heads up and down to with very long hair.

Drums: Well same thing goes but their using their entire body to play, so forgive most of them for not doing this..

and well yeah keyboards.. I have yet to see one that does shake their head while playing, but who knows I bet there is one.

[Kai Stromler]

The reason that metal videos 'recycle' these styles is that these styles, and especially the first two listed, are what is appropriate and germane for metal. Metal is and has historically been about the music, not about the image; anything else that intrudes into a video detracts from the main message. Remember how Metallica said they would never make a video? Remember how they said they would never make an artsy concept video? Remember how they took more heat for breaking the second promise than for breaking the first?

Video styles focusing on things other than band performance arose principally because band performance could not carry the songs involved. If you can convey the song with a live performance, there's no need for anything else. Metal music thrashes and makes you want to thrash. If the song you're videographing doesn't produce this response, it probably does need some extra artsy video sugar on top, but at that point you probably ought to re-examine its metalness.

The only 'experimental' metal video I've seen recently is Strapping Young Lad's "SYL", which is an excellent song, but the video is utterly overwhelmed with special effects. The performance behind them is strong enough to carry the music, but for some reason Devin and the prod team felt it was necessary to slurry all kinds of crap on top of the picture. Impenetrability and sensory overload are root objectives with SYL, so the decision isn't totally irrational, but in this case the effects do detract from the power of the music.

Short-form music video is a tough format to do something beyond straight performance with, creativity-wise. Experimentation is always expensive, as noted, and given the financial position of most metal artists and labels, something cheap that has a fair chance of market success is always going to be picked ahead of something expensive that has a fair chance of failing.

Beyond this comes the issue of creative control. Most metal artists are fiercely territorial about their music; there's little chance that they're going to let some random director come along and poison their creative product by plotting out some grand experimental or cinematic vision of the song. They'll either direct their own videos -- and most often, put the music center stage -- or work with directors who understand those controlling impulses and shoot band-centric videos.

Some people may see this vision of short-form music video as stunted or falling short of creative possibilities, but for everyone but the video director, the video is an afterthought. The band wrote the songs, made the record, and play the music live; the video is just something else that needs to be gotten through. For the label, the video is a necessary evil on the level of paying for a cover painting (or, in this day and age, for Niklas Sundin to pour a bucket of clipart through Photoshop); it's needed to sell the product. There is no major, distinguishing, creative component to it. That's the environment that directors work in. A cinematic or experimental idea needs to be really good to make it through this gauntlet, and if the experiment fails or the cinematic story comes off as lame, the director's chance for future work is greatly reduced. It's safer to just do what the band (to preserve their creative monopoly), the label (to save money), and the fans (because it's more true) all want and expect, and just shoot the band thrashing out.

Exhausted's "False Lies" and Pantera's cover of "Planet Caravan" are excellent videos, despite having nothing to do with the underlying music, and scarcely showing the bands at all. However, such experimentalism is fine only as a breather; for me at least, a real metal video does center substantially around the music.

(and yet somehow I grind out 63 metal music videos built solely around Japanese cartoons, with nary a hint of the bands responsible.....hmmm.....)

--K

[Warheart]

Videos always have a certian intention to promote the band, thus the bandmembers are always somewhere in the video, which is not bad, but these "experimental" videos are often just more interesting if you already know the band. Cause I have seen every In Flames video ever released and its always the same.
Most cool metal videos are just good because I like the music and since most metal bands (at least the good ones) don´t have to much money to make good videos they aren´t visually overwhemling. The only very good experimental Metal video is Dark Tranquillity´s "monochromatic stains" in my eyes at leas

[MetalWolf]

I think Kai has a point. However I dont mind it when a metal music video gets a little experimental. Sometimes it adds to the effect of the music. I look at Iron Maiden videos as an example, in a video like The Trooper they use other visuals to enchance the feeling of the song but not to throw you off the fact that they are "playing" the song.

[nailz]

I like Blind Guardian's video for Mr. Sandman.

[CerebralAssamite]

_\n/ SYL Strapping Young Lad is my all time fav video, crazy shit to watch when very drunk or high