Reviving the Video

There are no dead arts in music. In the early 1980s, MTV and the music video were thought to be the death knell of radio, which still managed to endure. Then, when MTV began to focus more on teen-centric TV shows than videos in the 1990s, obituaries were written for the music video.

Nope.

The medium has evolved, but videos also endure. It's not just Lady Gaga's splashy videos, but small, low-cost productions that are collaborations between independent bands and aspiring filmmakers.

“They're another way to promote your music,” said Scott Carney of the band Wax Fang. “Look at OK Go. Their video with the treadmills practically made that band.”

Carney, a former film student, and Ryan Daly, a Louisville filmmaker, made a collage-style video for “World War II (Pt. 2),” from Wax Fang's 2008 album “La La Land.” The video impressed other artists, and Carney has since made a video for The Whigs and collaborated with Daly on a recent video for the Athens rock band Dead Confederate.

Music videos for independent bands weren't particularly useful 20 years ago, because a video cost thousands of dollars to produce, and MTV wasn't likely to play it.

Today, videos have no gatekeepers. YouTube, Vimeo and other Internet video sites allow audiences to watch music videos on demand. Distribution comes in the form of bloggers, who eagerly steer people to videos they like.

One local band that has benefited from that relationship is the dance-pop band The Pass, which has garnered more than 26,000 views for the three videos it has posted in YouTube. The videos, directed by blogger Zach Hart, have riffed on the game foursquare, depicted a backward dance party and, most successfully, name-checked several music blogs. Flattered bloggers were happy to link to the video, “Vultures,” and thus promote the album from which it came, 2010's “Burst.”

“It was a great idea,” said Pass bassist Will Roberts. “We got on the radars for some blogs we would never have been involved with otherwise. It was brilliant.”

Producing a music video is cheaper than ever, Carney said. With competent hands to guide it, a video can be produced with a few hundred dollars worth of rented equipment and some computer editing software.

Or even more cheaply, if, like Carney, you use old black and white movies that otherwise would have been thrown away. The big investment was the time to find the footage and edit it.

“You don't have to have a $100,000 budget,” he said.

For aspiring filmmakers, videos present a chance to reach a wider audience.

“It's mutually beneficial for the filmmaker and the bands,” Daly said. “Videos are a great breeding ground — or at least a testing ground — for filmmakers. The only rule is that you have to have a song. You can then develop a micro-narrative or a theme.”

Billy Petot of the Louisville band Whistle Peak said a video is also a good artistic outlet for the bands.

“It's just another way for us to express ourselves,” he said. “Videos are a great tool. They can really add to the music. With the rise of YouTube and things like that, if you can make something people want to watch, it can do a lot for a band.”

Paradoxically, the abundance of inexpensive and easily made videos can overwhelm music fans, Carney said. There's a lot of material to go through these days.

“I'll probably spend a good two or three hours scrolling through Pitchfork's video section,” he said. “It's like anything else — 90 percent isn't going to be good unless you have an open mind, and I don't have a really open mind. But, yeah, then there's some really cool stuff out there.

“A pretty lady in a video never hurts,” he added.