KEXP DJ Sharlese Metcalf has seen enough music videos to know the power they can wield—good and bad.”You can have the greatest song and if you give it a really bad visual it can ruin the song forever,” Metcalf says. “This morning, I woke up at like 6 a.m., and saw the new iLoveMakonnen video with Drake for ‘Tuesday,’ and it’s the worst video ever. Everybody likes that song a little bit, and then they went and ruined it. But sometimes bands will come to KEXP and all I’ll want to do is talk to them about their video.”
Metcalf’s love of music videos led her to befriend Bobby McHugh, a producer and music video director at local creative agency World Famous. The two quickly bonded over their shared fondness for weird experimental clips and videos with well-executed simple concepts. So, they made a Tumblr to trade all these music videos, called ‘hly-sht.’
“We were excited by similar things,” McHugh says. “DIY, do-it-yourself, low budget things where people said ‘we’re just going to make something interesting with no money.’ We both bonded over our taste for that.”
What once was a Tumblr between friends has evolved into the new installment of Videoasis, a City Arts sponsored quarterly PNW music video showcase at Northwest Film Forum, this time curated by Metcalf and McHugh in what will be its third iteration.
The theme? “Dark, sexy and creepy pieces for Halloween.” Bands like Psychic Rites, King Dude, Ubu Roi (above), Grave Babies, Haunted Horses, Constant Lovers, UGLYFRANK will show their spooky stuff, including the debut of a new video from Dude York.
Long after the glory of MTV has faded into an endless cycle of reality TV shows about tan young adults yelling at each other, some might debate the relevance of the music video in 2014. But from a DJ perspective and a filmmaking perspective, both Metcalf and McHugh see plenty of merit in the medium.
“I think that a music video is a promotional tool, but its also an artistic tool,” Metcalf says. “Bands can do that standard thing—you know, oh you guys are a band and you go out and play shows and that’s what you do. But I think a music video goes a little bit beyond that and shows this unique visual identity that adds a whole new element to what you do.”
In McHugh’s eyes, music videos cheapo nature and willingness to get freaky, especially here in the region, are pushing the whole industry.
“There’s still blockbuster music videos, you know, Kanye,” McHugh says, “but there’s just something different out in the PNW. The people here aren’t working with the same kind of budget. You get a lot of weird experimentation that ultimately informs how films get made. That DIY music video culture is changing the film industry—people are making big feature films for a lot cheaper because of that experimentation that videos afforded.”
Videoasis, Wed. Oct. 22, 7 p.m., Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave, $11 (More info here)
