compendium of 90's music video clichés

1. Black and white urban landscape, random items turn colourful as our artist brings the magic of their music.

baggy clothes

2. Rappers in winter jackets in front of burning trash cans

4. Public domain footage of old timey dancing (a particular fave of rave music).

5. video partially or fully shot in green night vision, switches between apparently 'candid' footage and singer's looking at and very close to camera (I feel like this was a late-90s thing that continued into the early 2000s, but I think it still counts)

also a similar thing where the video switches back and forth between out of focus long shots and in focus close-ups (but not necessarily in green night vision)

6. don't know quite how to articulate this one, but quirky/eccentric extras doing quirky/eccentric things, but shot in such a way as to suggest poignancy or melancholy rather than funny, maybe in black and white or slow-motion. The quirky/eccentric extra is sometimes but not always a literal clown. 'Kite' by Nick Heyward is an example of the type of thing I'm getting at.

I think this is a very key component to 90s videos, just wacky off-the-wall shit happening, everything is "weird". Black Hole Sun is a good example of the "look at how bizarre normal life is" aesthetic.

I feel like there was a lot of spinning in 90s music videos, either the camera itself spinning around or following an object as it spins through the air, often in slow motion

could call number 6 the Bee Girl trope

worms eye view with fisheye lense

6. don't know quite how to articulate this one, but quirky/eccentric extras doing quirky/eccentric things, but shot in such a way as to suggest poignancy or melancholy rather than funny, maybe in black and white or slow-motion. The quirky/eccentric extra is sometimes but not always a literal clown. 'Kite' by Nick Heyward is an example of the type of thing I'm getting at.

― Platinum Penguin Pavilion (soref), Tuesday, August 13, 2024 1:10 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I always think of Hello Cruel World by E.

worms eye view with fisheye lense

― brimstead, Tuesday, August 13, 2024 1:27 PM (forty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbvxlvSIIww

guys jumping on top of cars

6. don't know quite how to articulate this one, but quirky/eccentric extras doing quirky/eccentric things, but shot in such a way as to suggest poignancy or melancholy rather than funny, maybe in black and white or slow-motion. The quirky/eccentric extra is sometimes but not always a literal clown. 'Kite' by Nick Heyward is an example of the type of thing I'm getting at.

The old shirtless guy in the Metallica video

Scene of band members performing on a retro styled stage ala the Ed Sullivan Show. (Ie: Almost every video in the late 90s directed by McG).

This entire video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmTPM4aUDW8

Grunge clichés give way to hip-hop clichés:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dscfeQOMuGw

people walking in slow motion

am I crazy or did "McG" once have to give an interview defending his use of the nickname "McG" like it was a real childhood nickname not something I made up to be very cool in the 90s

50s / 60s retro tv and design

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxugaMpt1vU

Strobe lights that make the band doing quirky things even quirkier, ex. A Veruca Salt video where they are riding pennyfarthing bicycles or any Nine Inch Nails video.

An actor and/or actress who'd become really famous within a couple years.

...and also the inverse: the 'ironic' appearance of a has-been.

Whatever is happening in the video is intermittently offset with a plain black screen with white text, possibly vaguely deep or possibly a list of relevant stats or facts. Text may be typewriter font

Cold opens/Prologues (they had these in the '80s, but the '90s was the golden era)

Video Toaster / Lightwave 3D-style animation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fH3keLuj9OI

Pointing out censorship (black bars, backmasking or bleeping profanity, "scene missing" title cards)

Directors like McG & Hype Williams getting their own title cards.

Directors who'd soon pivot to making Blockbuster Films (Fincher, Bay, McG, Ratner etc.)

it really upset me when someone bought the CD with Kid Rock's "Cowboy" on it and it turned out to have the "radio edit" bit in it, pretty sure he's supposed to say "suck my dick" there

Using special effects that were cutting edge in movies a year earlier

Multiple edits that blow out to white, like every REM video post Green

“story” of the video is interspersed with rapid cuts of band laughing/maybe fooling around in a studio, photographers and camera equipment in shot

Background or b-roll shots of people in a city sped-up time-lapse style, "Thank U" and this (OK, it's 2002, but still):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoooMQZdGW0

How has no one said white flashes

Especially ones that change the shot or camera angle

e.g. Cafe del Mar, Until It Sleeps, Stupid Girl, Bullet with Butterfly Wings, a hundred thousand others

bonus points if the colours are all saturated/washed out

Multiple edits that blow out to white, like every REM video post Green

― Maresn3st, Wednesday, 14 August 2024 00:20 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Unless that's what is meant by this ?

This might be the ultimate example

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWqJTKdznaM

Speaking of "Stupid Girl": damaged film marks, blotches, tramlines etc.

The white-out edit transition is a great one. Why was this so sought after, apart from just being in fashion? Does it just jazz up boring footage more than a vanilla cut, or was it felt to convey some kind of dreamy fried-brain feeling?

Another one: aggressive use of crash-zoom, starting or finishing right at the cut. Republican's "Ready To Go" is built almost entirely out of this, in tandem with white-flash. At the time I remember it feeling intensely, overpoweringly cool. Now I can't get through more than a few seconds.

Video takes place in futuristic-looking interior (which may be revealed to be a spaceship), see TLC "No Scrubs" or MJ "Scream".

Video images are kind of cut up as blocks Mondrian style, usually with the result that the singer’s (it’s usually the singer) face is irregular or like puzzle pieces where one part of the face is larger etc

How has no one said white flashes

Especially ones that change the shot or camera angle

e.g. Cafe del Mar, Until It Sleeps, Stupid Girl, Bullet with Butterfly Wings, a hundred thousand others

Three of these four videos are directed by Samuel Bauer, right? The one 90s video auteur who never really got to make the leap to directing movies

wow, never heard of Bayer before, but his videography speaks for itself. a huge impact on the look and affect of major-label rock in the 90s, and into the mid-00s.

an 80s cliche is, halfway through the fade-out the final shot will freeze. only Smalltown Boy and Close (To the Edit) come to mind rn but there's quite a lot

Holy smokes, the 'unrealized film projects of Samuel Bayer' list on wiki is epic!

Bayer had been attached to direct various different films over the years such as:

Monster's Ball
Get Carter, the 2000 remake starring Sylvester Stallone
A cancelled remake of Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia starring Benicio del Toro
A cancelled remake of Vanishing Point for Scott Free Productions
A cancelled remake of Near Dark for Platinum Dunes
Black Water Transit
Brilliance, a heist film starring Scarlett Johansson
The Boys, based on the comic book. He expressed interest in directing the film adaptation.
Tumor, based on the graphic novel
Icarus Rises, an original premise that he developed for a decade. A proof of concept trailer was released in 2017.

lol

On March 3, 2013, Bayer opened his first major solo exhibition at ACE Gallery Beverly Hills entitled, "Diptychs & Triptychs". Bayer presented a series of sixteen twelve-foot-tall, female nude triptychs as well as four ten-foot-tall diptych portraits. In an Interview magazine article, Bayer commented that "the initial effect of the portraits are overwhelming, and a bit spooky." Bayer's understanding of Hollywood's constant superficial dissection and scrutinization of women, lead him to strip his subjects of all artifice in order to provide an alternative view of womanhood in contemporary culture. Exposed full frontally, these women might have been perceived as vulnerable on a smaller scale; however, the straight gaze and the enlarged scale creates an intimation of a "new race of superwomen."

this thread makes me wonder if i even saw any music videos in the 90s? i couldn't name a single cliche.

I feel like there's this wide cultural divide between people of my generation who had cable in their house growing up and those who didn't. I didn't have cable so I pretty much never saw music videos.

i was living in my parents' house until 95 and then i was out and didn't have cable for most of 95-2000. even so i don't remember much about music videos for some reason. i watched 120 min religiously in the early 90s and still couldn't tell you what the cliches are.

Really glad people have mentioned white flashes, was the first thing I thought of but didn't know the name for it.

This famous british advert (made in 99, aired early 00) feels like it captures something of the aesthetic. Did Bayer do any ads or suchlike?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-VUlXl0wUQ

Jonathan Glazer ended up doing the Channel 4 idents from 2015. As abstract visual tone poems I'm sure they're fine. As idents they were terrible.

Multiple edits that blow out to white, like every REM video post Green

― Maresn3st, Wednesday, 14 August 2024 00:20 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Unless that's what is meant by this ?

― you can see me from westbury white horse, Wednesday, August 14, 2024 1:22 AM (eighteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

That is what I meant, you said it better.

Did Bayer do any ads or suchlike?

If anything, Bayer is/was even more prolific as an ad director. This women's sports spot for Nike is probably his most famous commerical, and features a number of his visual trademarks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ_XSHpIbZE

Bayer also did Eminem's Chrysler spot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiHscCBJmzc

I don't know why I remember this video almost 30 years later, but the thread title brought this immediately to mind. It's packed with things that have been mentioned here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps2YTseJv3I

Also I can't think of any specific examples but another gut reaction is "pane of glass with handwritten text all over it".

The one 90s video auteur who never really got to make the leap to directing movies

did kevin kerslake make some films im unaware of

ha that guy jumped from directing videos for Daydream Nation songs to "Get It On" by Kingdom Come

Distorted picture of band in front of stock video of a fireplace.

(Okay, this was actually for bands that didn't have videos on The Chart Show's indie charts... I'm pretty sure I'm not just misremembering this, can I get any validation or denial from UK ilxors?)

cross processing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_processing

(Xpost) You're not wrong emil.y:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnM76_tR6w4

The one 90s video auteur who never really got to make the leap to directing movies
did kevin kerslake make some films im unaware of

― Your Favorite Album in the Cutout Bin, Thursday, August 15, 2024 8:38 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

no disrespect to kerslake but he's a journeyman not a pantheon video director.

harsh realm, man

Filthy sinks.

Yes!

Sped up dashcam footage, maybe with the artist(s) in front of it.