Korean Music Videos

I am not a huge fan of music videos. I watch MTV for Next and Parental Control, but never for their music videos. Times have definitely changed from my middle school years. Artists today no longer promote new singles with a mere radio broadcast or a TV appearance, but have recruited music videos into their packaging tool.

I can see where people are coming from when they charge Korean music videos for being formulaic and predictable. Blogger, David Chun, laments this predicament in his latest blog entry, but unlike us, he actually decided to make his own music video  (http://www.davidchun.com/archives/000156.html). A simple explanation would be that these seemingly formulaic music videos work. Like a drama series, which some of us might dismiss as cheesy or predictable, it appeals to the masses as it exploits our emotional vulnerabilities and flirts with the unattainable (I say masses because Chinese and Japanese music videos do reflect these “formulaic” stereotypes).

Admittedly, we are dealing with a rather young industry here. MTV Singapore, Indonesia, etc. have a sizeable but not a statistically significant audience base. However, industry veterans are noticing the market changes. MTV recently extended its scope with MTV Korea.

Even skeptics have to argue for the inevitable sophistication Korean music videos will demonstrate over time. Sophistication not only in terms of thematic material, but also in technical execution (angles, location, editing, etc.). Take a look at the보고싶다 music video. Although it is based on a reasonably simple theme of love, not everything is straightforward. The director manipulates musical interludes to not only better convey the entire story but also to accent the emotional heights of the video. For example, at the moment before the Chinese man is arrested, the music goes through tonal modulation and suspense to reflect the moment building towards his arrest before the singer finally sings the last phrase of the song. On the visual side, the myriad of camera angles capture the most extreme of emotions with gripping sequences of events. Most might discard this as superfluous, but it definitely diverts from the mechanical and formulaic “verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus” methodology that one comes to except of music videos. Unpredictability is also reflected by Big Mama’s Breakaway, which cleverly diverges from the “predictable path” with a very surprising twist at the very end.

With the rising importance of music videos, producers are receiving larger production budgets, which not only enable exploration of exotic locations, but also more hours for editing (We did watch a music video based on the Vietnam War, which apparently was produced on a rather generous budget).

Although claims of Korean music videos as being predictable or formulaic are not completely unfounded, they are increasingly inapplicable with the advent of the more innovative music videos we see in Korea today. Yes, they do dabble on the over-exhausted themes of love and heartbreak but it is no longer as straight forward as one might expect – no walks on the beach, exchange of love letters or a kiss under a tree. Some music videos do subscribe to these stereotypes, but others have demonstrated careful and creative manipulation of elements of vision, music and time.

- ARC