Edited by Sophie Lovell, and published by DGV, On Air: the global language and visual messages of MTV comprehensively documents the evolution of MTV’s visual language and idents. I was asked for some lead contributions for the title, which included The Business of Being Creative, an interview with Creative Director of MTV International, Cristian Jofré; and Eternal Cycle of the Creative Impulse, an essay on the creative challenges of MTV and where it sits in the audiovisual world. That essay appears below.
Eternal Cycle of the Creative Impulse
If MTV stands still it dies. MTV’s success lies with courting the individual who wants to express him or herself. To do this, its attitude must be fresh and relevant, aligned to its massive, international youth audience. Like Ourobouros, the mythical serpent that curls around to swallow it’s own tail, MTV has to eat itself and undergo a constant state of reinvention if it is to avoid becoming irrelevant, old hat, a past tense; this process gives it an insatiable appetite for new creative blood.
When MTV started in 1981, it was anti-establishment; everything TV shouldn’t be. Conceived when only a handful of music videos were being produced to showcase artists’ recordings, MTV both created and defined a market in those first few years. The visual language it created, the texture of the channel — with its wacky idents and bewildering, graphic-influenced spots — evolved at a blistering pace; and so did the audience.
Many from that audience — growing up as part of the ‘MTV generation’ — have been inspired by the channel’s vibrant and diverse visual world to produce their own creative offerings, shaping and redefining new content that will in turn inspire the next generation of contributors. MTV has sustained itself on this virtuous cycle. The evolution of MTV constantly gathers pace, so the channel, now more so than ever, is not really about the videos, it is about the experience. As the need to distinguish itself from a host of imitators intensifies, the spots and original content it produces become increasingly significant. No other channel has such a voracious appetite for outsourcing its creativity to a diverse array of new broadcast designers, animators, and filmmakers.
“For us, MTV was a company that we wanted to work with as they have a huge youth audience who are familiar with the language of moving image and graphics,” asserts Noah Harris, of London-based multi-disciplinary design company, Precursor. Responsible for MTV work that includes idents for the EMA 2004 (European Music Awards) and the overarching Hijack project (made in concert with online specialists, Hi-Res!), Harris acknowledges that the main draws for working with MTV include a channel audience that allows it to push the boundaries of screen graphics, and the station’s willingness to try new content ideas.
“MTV seem to give a lot of design firms their first break in TV graphics. Of course, this could be down to the fact that MTV tend to give smaller budgets than you would normally expect for the amount of work, so have to be more creative in searching for hungry designers. But we have always found that working with MTV allows us to explore slightly more left-field ideas, both conceptually and visually. They allow us to experiment during the process of the project rather than having to have absolutely everything locked down before the production process begins.”
Nurturing this sympathetic production environment has kept the creative field on side, and happy to partner on ideas across the MTV network. The fluidity of MTV’s identity and programming — the way some spots that are created may only air for a week or so — means that gambles can be taken. If mistakes are made and an idea doesn’t gel, then it is quickly forgotten. Rather than inflicting lasting damage on the channel, it cements a reputation for risk taking, for letting talent experiment. So well-conceived is this MTV ‘house’ strategy that only a few chinks exist in an approach that is designed to cultivate creativeness.
Net artist-animator, Han Hoogebrugge highlights one such discrepancy when giving his otherwise highly positive thoughts on working with the Channel: “In my case, it didn’t feel like working for a ‘client’. There was no fuzz, no long discussions on what I wanted and what they wanted, just a few guidelines on using, or rather not using, explicit sex and violence. And the MTV logo had to be in it somewhere. I proposed my ideas, they said ‘Yes’ right away, and there were no unpleasant surprises along the way or at the end when I delivered the final animations. The only thing I didn’t like is that I wasn’t allowed to put my credits in the animations. When MTV shows them on TV they don’t tell you who made it.”
So while MTV is happy to promote the careers of the music artists with their videos on heavy rotation, the visual creators on which the station increasingly relies to boost it’s edginess amid the slickly produced boy band videos often get sidelined. Up until recently, this was the accepted quid pro quo for the exposure and relatively high freedom offered for such a paying gig. But as this graphic inventiveness has come to be one of MTV’s biggest assets in the fight for broadcast differentiation, this has come to be one of the Channel’s stranger anomalies. It is an irony not lost on the station’s strategists, because as MTV nowadays is quick to point out, it is not all about the music any more. And, to be fair, attempts are being made to correct this imbalance. Cracks in its progressive agenda are being papered over. Some MTV channels now highlight the directors of the music videos being played, even programming work by directing luminaries of the pop video world, such as Michel Gondry, in featured slots. MTV International has a hand in radicalizing and refreshing content across the network, and to a certain degree, addressing this problem. Indeed, this is how Hoogerbrugge, who has won awards for his pioneering web animations, got involved.
“MTV asked me to do an Artbreak. It’s not a promo, or a station call or anything to directly promote MTV—it’s art,” affirms Hoogerbrugge. “Bringing back the Artbreaks into MTV was an idea created by MTV International. It was an attempt to make MTV more cutting edge again, like they were when MTV started. Making an Artbreak means a lot of freedom to create.”
To a great extent, MTV is a victim of its own success. It has moved from being a niche station where it is far easier to be cutting edge and pioneering, not least because what it was doing was new. It has gone from being anti-establishment to being the music channel establishment. As the ideas and concepts it trades on have become more integrated within our wider culture, and it has transformed itself into a youth channel with an international presence, it is now partnering with the style-leaders and creators that once watched the channel to help keep itself relevant, and come up with the content for its mass international audience. As a brand, it has moved onto a bigger, brave new world, where it is harder to be brash and easier to be bland.
“ I think the brand represents youth culture as opposed to music,” elucidates Precursor’s Harris. “It has been cleverly developed to be much more all-encompassing than it ever was before. The ownership of shows like The Osbournes, Jackass, Pimp My Ride, and the huge events that MTV put on around the world, have paved the way for them to become a voice for youth culture rather than just a bunch of channels that show music videos. At the same time though, what is the brand? It’s a multi-national, big-media business making cash. I guess in terms of recognition, it’s up there with McDonalds.”
MTV, like Google with its all-encompassing credo of “don’t be evil”, defines the face of the new multi-nationals. The leering clown face of Ronald McDonald is replaced by the smirk of the geek-chic nerd and knowing grin of the street-smart skate kid. Contemporary MTV trades on the new cultural terrain of ‘massclusivity’ — exclusivity for the masses. MTV doesn’t have to be on the bleeding edge, otherwise it haemorrhages audience and advertisers. It really just has to do enough. But what it actually does is more than enough.
“I think it’s a goal of MTV,” says Cristian Jofre, Creative Director of MTV International, “to take something from being underground and allow it to be more mainstream.”
For all the eternal contradictions between business and art, MTV continues to be an enthusiastic translator and fervent communicator for the underground. It is up to these subterranean cultural movements to stay one step ahead, and up to the visual creators to keep moving forward. In so doing, more young people than ever before get to experience street art, underground culture and sorts of experimental moving image that they may not normally have access to. MTV democratises cool, and as it does so, the artists who work with the broadcast network can also get their work seen by more than just a metropolitan, cultural elite.
Music videos can be seen as the interface between experimental moving image, and mainstream filmmaking. They offer a transitory space with possibilities to play with the form. MTV uses the broadcast space around these videos to turbocharge this play — and while it had this space all to itself when it first started, stablemates — such as the U.S. channel Spike TV — also take this ball and run with it. Other alternate venues have also sprung up offering a ‘differentiated’ viewing experience since MTV first began. This process is mainly due to the digital revolution.
I love my MTV. It has had a defining influence on the way I view and digest images, a nurturer of a scopophilic tendency I’ve put to good use. The Channel provoked my appetite for the non-conventional in moving image. Early MTV shows like the seminal Mark Pellington and Jon Klein-created Buzz — a 13-part series that acted as a high-concept, non-linear bricolage of music and visuals cut and spliced from the global village — had a crucial impact on me, and others like me, who would later establish alternate viewing platforms. When I was creating the onedotzero digital moving image festival, I had in my head something akin to MTV, but without the need to adhere to network scheduling, broadcasting rules and television standards, to musical taste or even audience predilection.
So the cultural milieu that MTV cultivated begat festivals like onedotzero and Bitfilm in Europe, and Dfilm, Resfest and Spike and Mike’s Festival of Twisted Animation in the U.S. The digital revolution has made it just a short hop from this channel narrowcasting to the micro-focussed world of Atom and iFilm, online purveyors of video clips for almost every taste. Now, anyone with a website and streaming software can set up their own online channel to show their own work. The way these online and offline showcases have redefined our viewing habits, and refreshed our video forms, harks back to the creation of MTV. It is a similar, but more profound shift in viewing habits and artist empowerment.
Now senior figures at MTV view the online, wireless world as the main competitor for the eyeballs and affections of its natural audience. Kids are more obsessed with their mobile phones than their remote controls. MTV is developing strategies to take advantage of these new digital distribution platforms not only to engage better with these kids, but also to enrich the relationship it has with artists.
Animators like New York-based PES have exploited the viral nature of the online world to get noticed by agencies and commissioners. The hand-created, rough and spontaneous nature of the stop motion animation generated by this animator is heavily reminiscent of early MTV spots. His visual distinctiveness, and the way he can execute strong and humorous ideas with brevity, are the qualities most highly prized by MTV and these new viewing platforms. It is only natural, therefore, that PES, and others who are excelling in these formats, are the creatives being picked up by MTV to cement viewership and reinforce the Channel’s visual heritage and ground-breaking roots. This is MTV chasing its own tail again.
Recently initiated projects such as MTVLOAD allow those quirky animated shorts by PES to rub up against gonzo street-sport clips such as Wheelbarrow Freestyle, and motion graphic pieces by graphic-influenced directors such as Richard Fenwick. MTVLOAD is conceived as a way to push the channel ethos into the mobile space, and connect more immediately with this new generation of cultural guerrillas.
Peter Moller, who heads up the project at MTV International, views it as having important implications for the Channel’s connections between the talent and the viewer. “MTVLOAD is an ambitious project in many ways. It is one way for us to get back to this creative, impulsive content that has been MTV’s hallmark. We can’t always get as much of this on the main channel as we’d like because of commercial needs, but we know we need to take care of the brand, and the attitude. MTVLOAD is a clear shift towards this.”
Moller sifts through alternate content sources to find creative work that breaks up the expectations of corporate programming and broadcast design. This is a neat way to gather content that is geographically more diverse, not necessarily from the creative and metropolitan heartlands of the West. With this project, MTV is fighting the pull toward conservatism that many large, successful companies face. The work that is being acquired and commissioned for the project is making it back on-air in MTVLOAD mini-shows. This is content that was finding it harder to make it to transmission. “We are also going into a highly commercial and conservative niche like mobile ringtones, and thinking about it on a deeper level. This is an area where really horrible ringtones and animated wallpapers are being sold to kids at ridiculous prices. We want to give the MTV audience a higher level of well-conceived content, and make it free for them. All it costs is the airtime.”
MTV acknowledges that it thrives on diversity, and needs to battle hard to honour a legacy of risk-taking. Creatives and audiences alike may now have transformed into the ‘iPod generation’, and they still want their MTV — but customized.
The Hijack project is a flagship venture in the organisation’s efforts to manage the dichotomy between encouraging individuality while building a cohesive, cross-border brand. “The initial brief was loose and didn’t really define any boundaries for deliverable elements, it was much more about defining an attitude and trying to sum up what MTV is about,” Precursor’s Harris explains. Hijack, in essence, was a toolbox to shape the mindset of all the channels within the MTV network.
“The theory behind it was based on MTV’s ownership of youth culture and the fact that they encompassed so much more than music. We pulled together a huge amount of contemporary, and not so contemporary, cultural reference. This notion of hijacking, of taking something that already exists and creating something new from it just seemed to be perfect for MTV. We incorporated ideas for everything: from bootlegging, pirate radio, stickering, postering, graffiti, customised clothing, and customised cars. Points of reference were taken from Adbusters through to the Chapman brothers, and Christo. Hijack is also a great word. It is provocative; especially now we’re all paranoid freaks.
“The great thing about the project was that we wanted what we delivered to be hijacked, to be changed and developed and to evolve over time. The on-air look has been taken on by loads of countries internationally, and in each region it looks slightly different. It has absorbed cultural references from those countries.”
MTV, as the standard-bearer for many of our contemporary cultural reference points, has been demonised for ills it has little to do with. An unfortunate paradox exists between it being accused of dumbing down content, of contributing to a homogenous global aesthetic, and the way it positively revels in artistic freedom, thriving on visual sophistication. At least in its content, it has the most control over — channel identity, informational spots and rising amounts of original content — MTV taps into the cultural zeitgeist with an unerringly progressive agenda.
As it stands on the new frontiers of a multi-platform world, MTV is manoeuvring itself to capitalize on the creative partnerships it has fostered. Jofre succinctly encapsulates the philosophy that has been the trademark of its most successful periods: “Copy other people but don’t copy you.”