To be clear, I am not complaining, but merely stating a fact: nowadays, official music videos are often composed by cartoon like animations or 3D-rendered models. Being a curious fan of 3D animations, it has fascinated me with its vibrant work of the creators behind the scenes, that often takes days to be optimized and put together. So, why not drop my two cents while exploring these trends further?
“Classic” or live-action music videos were thwarted at the dawn of the pandemic, and it in turn caused a surge in alternative ways of making videos (with the former slowly making a comeback). As one can see in the “Cantina” (Tokyo Machine and Sasquatch) or the “Sinners Paradise” (SZP & Rebelion) videos, these masterpieces are almost transforming into short movies, narrating stories and entertaining its witness, both visually and musically. They add a value that the usual boring shoots with models dancing and fireworks miss, and I am loving it!
Let’s start with plain animated format, which is a popular method for years (just look at “Bad” by Guetta, 2014). Artists like Pickle and labels such as Dharma are exploiting the method with amazing visuals, and I could go on for hours with examples; ranging from AREA 21’s “POGO” to “El Mariachi” by Bassjackers & Jay Hardway. They are an excellent medium to tell (absurd) tales with a lower budget, and am pretty sure will expand even more in the coming days.
Speaking about 3D videos, Rave Culture outset the trend by animating their own artworks for their music videos, which was soon picked up by rivals Revealed Recordings and other underground imprints namely Intensity, Madox and Outrave Recordings. It creates a certain intrigue on how each time the album art will be put to use in the video, as you can find plenty examples demonstrating in these label’s YouTube page. While I remain dubious about the future of this tech, the field is certainly evolving fast enough to get outdated by more efficient means. These renders were impossible a few years ago.
Concluding, there are large categories of music video styles, from which I talked about my two favorites. Which other styles do you prefer? Anything is better than those generic festival shooting/model dancing/stock videos tapes, mind you!
What do you think?
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