Annoying? You bet! But there’s gold in those inane lyrics!
OK.
Rebecca Black
Yes, I know. But let’s move beyond that.
What’s most interesting here is the story behind Rebecca Black’s success.
I’ll just lift the next graph from New York Magazine, since they have already done all the hard work:
About a year ago, as an elaborate gift, Black’s mother paid Ark Music Factory $4,000 to make a music video for her then-13-year-old daughter. At the time, Ark was a one-man, fee-for-service operation run by Patrice Wilson, who, along with another composer, Clarence Jey (whom Wilson found through a Craigslist ad), wrote the song “Friday†in a single afternoon. Wilson then shot the video in the backyard of Black’s father’s house, populated by a collection of her young friends doubling as video extras.
Woah!
Stop.
Rewind.
Let’s look at that again.
Black’s mother paid Patrice Wilson, a ‘one-man’ operation, $4K to make the music video. Which he did by hiring a composer from Craiglslist. They then shot the whole thing in Black’s back yard.
Well friends.
Does this tell you something about potential in the extremely lucrative music video business?
It sure speaks to me.
Volumes.
It says that the massively expensive and complex Music Video Production Industry is as ripe for picking as the newspaper classified business was to Craigslist.
Why should music companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, to a handful of LA based ‘directors’, (not to mention production companies), when you can get some pretty impressive results in your own back yard (or that of Mr and Mrs Black?) Not to mention the composer advertising on Craigslist. (The irony here is that the ‘superstar’ who comes out of this is Rebecca Black, who seems to have done next to nothing – sort of like anchors on TV news…. But that’s for another blog.)
In any event, Patrice Wilson seems to be getting the idea, as a quick visit to Ark Music Factory’s website will tell you.
(Personally, I think the site could use a LOT of work. He seems to be better at making music videos than he is at marketing himself)
In any event, why should Patrice have all the fun?
He’s tapped into something really interesting here.
For more info, go to Francisco’s ‘how to make a music video’ videos (so to speak).
As you will see, it’s remarkably simple.
And it seems to work.
1 Comment
kenny October 13, 2011
Wait…you’re using Rebecca Black as your litmus test for successful music videos made on the cheap?
You ask – “Why should music companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to LA based ‘directors’ when you can get some pretty impressive results in your own back yard?”
It seems that you must be trolling here, waiting for someone to say “The Rebecca Black video rose to fame because the song sucked so bad. It was a national joke because it sucked so bad.” Cause that’s what happened and everyone knows it.
Rebecca Black could theoretically be the next William Hung – (sure he’s making money and people know him, but they certainly do not equate him with quality vocal talent in any way. He’s simply NOT a good singer.)
So, I don’t get it. You want us to find the worst songwriters, slop together a poorly written video that makes no sense and hope that it’s bad enough to be the next “Springtime for Hitler”?