"They're kind of a big deal"

Could anything happen to make me more sick of the music video business?

Here's how it works- for those wondering. Label, management, someone calls you and tells you to think of an idea for a music video. All the while impressing upon you how important their client is...

"They have an upstream deal with Warner Bros. so..."

or

"They're opening for FOB this summer so..."

So...so...so WHAT? So I should think harder? I should create a concept somehow keeping the fact that their getting big in mind? The reason that is told to me by people, is to automatically put me on a tier lower. It's as if to say : "Andrew, some people are going to be shedding limbs to get this job so..."

So I have to care. What's funny is that- half of them don't go on to get "big" or "blow-up" and the ones that do, are still making sucky music videos today. They happened to be 250k worth of suckiness (which some would see as a victory for the band...I see as a travesty for our American artistic landscape).

So I ask the management, or label "bros" (they're always my best friend at first) if there's a specific direction they want me to go in creatively, they always respond one of two ways :

Either

"No man, just bring it, Bowserize it, we want to see what you got in that noggin of yours!"

or

"We're thinking like a TRL meets MCR meets Boys like Girls meets Summer-time jam with a twist of Ok Go! mixed in and a splash of Nelly (grills not Fertado) to be safe"

WHAT THE CRAP ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT? You know what? They don't even know what they're talking about. Inside every manager or label exec is a quivering naked child who doesn't know the first thing about the creative process to begin with. They don't know where ideas come from, how they form and gestate. They have no clue how to execute any ideas they do have- but they are good at yelling, and making demands that reference artists from 40 different genres.

So I listen to the song, get inspired, write a treatment.

and...they...are...SO NOT INTO IT.

After telling me that I could freakin' Black Stallion it, no fences no boundaries...they bring in the restraints.

"Yeah, Andrew, man not at all what we were thinking."

"Oh you were thinking something? Because you either told me you had no ideas, or your ideas made less sense than Million Dollar Baby winning best picture two years ago"

They spin me something about the lead singer being really into some artistic movement involving sculptures of purple lions dressed like Native American medicine men...and they want me to represent that flow...but without ever showing a lion...because there's no budget for a lion.

My point is I am always led in a direction that I can't go. They say "Do something violent without the violence!" or "Do something yellow without the yellow!"

These people are certifiably and unfortunately insane. Yet they run businesses, successful ones at that. Without ever actually knowing what they want ..."It's just...there's a dog in my head, and that's just not the dog"

Or they send me a link to a video that they want me to "do something like".

WHAT IN THE WORLD DOES THAT MEAN!!??

Never NEVER am I sent a link that is actually attached to a good video mind you, no they send me the latest Boys like Girls video, or the latest Darren Doane video or Shane Drake trainwreck.

You can't be inspired by something that is actually worse than anything you would ever accidentally step in while walking through a dog park.

You can only draw inspiration from things that ELEVATE you, not things that would require a frontal lobotomy to even sit through. The best inspirations don't even come from things you've seen, they come from your IMAGINATION, they are things yet UNSEEN...that's why it will be innovative, that's why there's geniuses in this world- they create things that we have yet to be exposed to 3,000 times in a row.

So we back and forth, they ask me to compromise and make something that doesn't make sense, or make something that caters to the lowest rung on the ladder- or they just say "this isn't gonna work"

You know what people? I knew that before you even called me.