MONTREAL — The two star-crossed lovers pause for a minute, looking deep into each other's eyes. It might be the drinks, it might be infatuation, or it might even be true love. Either way, it's a powerful moment, an archetypal boy-meets-girl minute that anyone can relate to. For a minute, their surroundings completely disappear.
Then a waiter politely moves past them, carrying two bowls of piping-hot soup, and the moment is ruined. The couple turn to director Mike Wong who calmly says, "All right, let's do that again."
Welcome to the seat-of-your-pants, shoot-where-you-can, soup-be-damned routine of a no-budget music video shoot.
The scene above took place during the early afternoon of a windy Sunday in the homey confines of Ye Olde Orchard Pub on de la Montagne St. The small crew of two actors, a few extras, lighting crew and Wong had gathered to shoot the video for Why You So Rude?, a soulful ditty from the Bilal Butt Trio's latest record. When asked why a relatively unknown act would need a video, Butt — the trio's eponymous frontman, who you might better know from his gig as a DJ on CHOM 97.7 FM — answered that if his day job has taught him one thing about breaking a band, it's the importance not just of the audio, but of the visual as well.
"What I've learned being in radio and from my website is that people will go and listen to your music if they're really into music, but the vast majority of people are into videos," he explained. "They want to discover new music, but they want to see the artist as well."
Just a few years ago, music videos seemed to be going the way of spandex outfits and the CD — an interesting yet anachronistic piece of music iconography that was destined for the dustbin of rock 'n' roll history. MTV had legally changed its name from Music Television, MuchMusic was turning its focus to reality programming, and YouTube was still but a glimmer in the eye of the Internet.
But the ascendance of YouTube changed things: More and more people were discovering new artists online, and an interesting video representation was suddenly a necessity again, even for those who couldn't afford a $7-million Michael Jackson extravaganza.
"We basically have no budget," Wong said. "Our main expenditures at this point are food and transportation. You can technically shoot a video on five bucks.
"But we could use some money," he added with a laugh.
While videos that don't have the financial backing of a large record company are not a new thing, the ability to make them cheaply and not have them look comically amateurish is a relatively recent development. Wong credited the rise of relatively cheap, high-quality cameras that don't require extensive lighting setups to get great visuals, as well as inexpensive and user-friendly editing software.
"Technology has really helped us in the past five years, that indie guys like us can actually make videos, which was actually impossible 10 years ago," he said.
Not every director takes the same optimistic view on the rise of technology. Dwayne Blanchette, who directs under the name Dan Dahvideoh, is another low-budget music-video creator who moved from editing TV shows to directing two years ago as an effort to find a more creative outlet. In his opinion, the ready availability of equipment has actually made things harder for him, as more musicians are taking it upon themselves to make videos without directors.
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