It's just that I was bit more frank in my opinion a few pages ago and I don't think that it was all that well received. Oh well.
Hmmm, it doesn't at the moment but I could certainly try to work them in.
You know, Freud might have something to say about that desire.
Here goes ...
First of all, I’m not promising this to be some ground-breaking, never-seen-before music video manifesto. In fact, I will reference other videos already done that I would borrow heavily from. I just think that this idea would be better suited to the song … that’s all.
Being that AYNIM is directed at all of “us,” meaning the whole collective – the fans, the haters, the critics, the record company execs, tour promoters, the paps & tabloids, youtube, www, etc., I would use all that media as a backdrop for the video. The look would be similar to other more two-dimensional, graphic-y videos such as
Franz Ferdinand “Take Me Out,” U2 “Window in the Skies,”, even
Modest Mouse “Float On” ... think Monty Python Flying Circus animation. I see bits and pieces of mag articles spanning his career (the good and the bad) being pieced together and animated. I see Morrissey as a frozen image captured in a photograph in an article and then coming to life, animated singing the lyrics to AYNIM. I see some of dicarwritght’s photoshop composites, show posters that fans & promoters have made with Moz coming to life and singing in 2D form. Moz’s image on the face of the 10pk LA Palladium tix for instance cut with clips on youtube of the countless bootleg recordings of the song. Marquis signs, pap photos, tattoos, the bday wishes we make using Moz’s image holding a bday cake … I’m being pretty stream-of-conscious here at this point but I think you get the idea.
All of Morrissey’s performance would be animated, very 2D and graphic like which would allow us to see him singing this song in the years spanning his career.
For the “You don’t like me but you love me either way you’re wrong” closing section (is this a bridge of some sort? I’m not that musically literate). This part would be the only true live performance section of the video. I can’t decide if the band is there or not … what I do see is the 2D Moz transitioning into 3D Moz. I see a black void with the news articles, youtube clips and other media becoming a backdrop behind him. In other words, he lifts and separates from the flat background and everything looks now like it’s in a room … a black stage with animated backgrounds “projected” on the black walls behind him. I know the look of this has been done before but for the life of me I couldn’t think or find a reference.
As he sings about us missing him when he’s gone, the backgrounds start to fade away until there’s nothing left but a black void and Moz alone in it. With the last “You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone ….” He fades away into the darkness. We’re left with a black frame.
Perhaps the ending is a bit too literal but in my head I kinda like it. I’m not so sure I’m painting a picture here. I’ve honestly never written a music video treatment before. Am I making sense to anyone?
This is all just my opinion obviously. I just love the medium of the music video and I’m sad to see that it’s degenerated to a mere shell of the art form it used to be.
First of all, thanks for posting this. It's got some very interesting ideas. I like the use of all the imagery because Morrissey is nothing if not heavily image-conscious, and so are the fans. Seeing all those elements together would be fun and maybe even breathtaking, and wholly appropriate for a Greatest Hits single like this. (What about the mysterious symbols on the recent sleeves? Any way of incorporating them?) I like also that you have the video shifting into 3D at the end with the live performance. You're right, the song takes a turn there which your video would catch properly.
You do realize that you could probably edit this video yourself and post it on YouTube, right? Even the live footage must exist somewhere, and who knows, even if you have to use bootleg-quality video it might reinforce the sense that we're watching a fan's perspective.
I wanted to add that I thought your post was fascinating for another reason, and I should stress I say the following with all due respect and not in any disparaging way whatsoever.
You said, "I will reference other videos already done that I would borrow heavily from", mentioning U2, Franz Ferdinand and Modest Mouse, even Monty Python. Near the end of your post you include this very telling line, "I know the look of this has been done before but for the life of me I couldn’t think or find a reference".
Those are fair comments to make. The video you've proposed is both good
and a little derivative (of course, it's hard to say how derivative now, because once you work on it you might discover new and interesting layers to explore). Because the video would, as I say, look good and at the same time remind the viewer of other bands' videos (even if the reference is unknown or vague), it is actually a mark of distinction from every other band's videos that Morrissey's clips (this one as well as his others, of which this latest is unmistakably kin) are content to be so simple and uncomplicated.
I was attempting to say this above, actually: the clip is refreshingly clear of any high concept ideas without seeming for a moment that Morrissey disdains the medium. He and the director reduced everything to the most basic possible dynamic-- Morrissey and band lip-syncing to the song at a location shoot-- which is completely in line with Morrissey's long-standing mistrust of high-concept videos and his 25-year old insistence, from The Smiths to his latest outfit, on the beauty of the stripped-down, four- or five-piece pop band with nothing more powerful to offer than songs (which, of course, turned out to be everything or, as he says in the single, "all we need"). The video's strength is more in what it isn't.
As soon as the step is taken into some kind of "concept", no matter how small or brilliant that step is, the video leaps into competition with every other video in the marketplace. With "Irish Blood, English Heart", for example, the mere placement of the band in a warehouse surrounded by a congregation of Morrissey apostles wasn't a bad idea-- actually I think the video is OK-- but that choice immediately makes it an interpretable piece of film. It becomes "interesting" for reasons not endemic to the song. And the video is swept away to be swallowed forever into the vast ocean of MTV-land. A video like AYNIM is an affront-- a polite, urbane, well-meaning affront-- to every other video in its vicinity.
But it's equally hard to avoid concepts and go naked, as it were. The classic example, in my opinion, of how even the most basic footage becomes "narrative film" in the hands of a concept director is New Order's "The Perfect Kiss", shot by Jonathan Demme. All Demme did was film New Order recording a live take of the song in the studio. The clip moves from band member to band member, patiently and methodically capturing each snap of the drum, press of a key, or strumming of a guitar string. There is no story other than the band playing the song, yet immediately it's clear that it's an incredibly stylized video, hardly a case of "just a guy with a camera in a studio".
Most, if not all, of Morrissey's videos act as placeholders rather than discrete works of art. They're videos that aren't "videos" as we know them (with the exception of one or two that are admittedly pretty conventional). Most are basic performance pieces. There are several that use characters or some kind of "story", like "Interesting Drug", but these are pretty much transparent collages of images-- or brief, amusing sketches-- all pointing back to Morrissey. But not to the video Morrissey. Instead, the videos point outside themselves to the Morrissey of your stereo or iPod or the Morrissey of the live performances, because it's there, and not inside your TV, that the truly great pop moments occur.
They look like they were made on a dime yet made in good faith-- almost as if put together by someone whose sensibility was totally alien to MTV who was also, strangely, uncynical about MTV, too. That is, not disdainful of the medium, as were some bands like The Replacements, who I mentioned in another post. They all convey exactly the right amount of
distance between Morrissey and MTV: enough to make him stand apart, not enough to make us think he doesn't covet mass appeal. Most of his career choices are in the same vein, none easier to see than his loathing of the pop charts side by side with a desire for hit singles. The pose-- and it
is a pose-- is that of a pop star eager to play the pop star game but not quite sure of how to do it. The studied, self-deprecating, rudimentary quality of many of his videos is his way of winking to the fans as if to say, "What's this? How does this work?"
Same with comments about how he doesn't use computers or dislikes air travel and has no elaborate stage shows and all the rest. The total effect of all these hints Morrissey drops is to give us a picture of a legend who is proudly and defiantly anachronistic. A throwback. A cheerful luddite. A matinee idol who would've made more sense 50 years ago but now, in this brave new world, looks slightly uncomfortable with and even embarrassed by the demands of the modern marketplace. As I said, a pose: a pose he has always cultivated and which this video artfully captures.
