This is one of those rare cases in this day and age where I would say proponents of expensive music videos are correct: this cool video did get me to pay attention to a new band.

Widow Sunday‘s video for “Strings of Clarity” owes a huuuuuge debt to Fred Stuhr, the mastermind behind the animation in Tool’s early music videos. The characters are similar, they move in the same manner, the textures and lighting are the same, they use the same dark fades between cuts… so similar to the Tool videos. But still, credit where it’s due, and animator Ossian has done a fine job here. The video got me to pay attention to (and subsequently write about) a band I otherwise wouldn’t have. And this video wasn’t necessarily expensive to make if he/she owned certain equipment – so there!

-VN

Thanks: Timothy Scott

I know I gave Earache head honcho Digby Pearson some not-so-gentle ribbing a couple of weeks ago with regards to his defense of the indefensible re-thrash fad, but I still appreciate what he’s doing with his “straight talk” blog Ask Earache. In his latest entry, Pearson answers a reader question about the £25,000 budget the label spent on a music video for Cathedral in the early ’90s, a sum that would be considered ludicrous by today’s standards.

Pearson’s answer basically boils down to this: a) those were different days, b) equipment was way more expensive back then, c) there was major label money involved from Sony/Columbia. But I’d like to focus on (a), namely the role of the music video today vs. the ’80s, ’90s, and early ’00s. My argument: in these different times, who really needs a fancy-shmancy music video?

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