Next New Networks Launches $99 Music Videos

It all came about because of “Knock Knock.” It’s a comedy sketch I made with some buddies of mine one evening. We posted it online (YouTube, Myspace) and it got Millions of views. We spent like 40 bucks on it!

I always wanted to make music videos, so this gave me an idea.

What if we took cost out of the equation, made it more of a creative CHALLENGE?

Can we still make something cool if we could only spend 99 dollars?

I chose $99 because (I don’t know, for some reason) $100 sounds like
real money and $99 doesn’t. It’s just enough to get something made.

From this, “$99 Music Videos” was born.

You certainly can’t! Typically, the filmmaker provides the video gear and the band provides the instruments.

In this day and age, it seems almost everyone has access to a video camera and a computer (which you can use to edit on). You can use any type of camera, get creative. One filmmaker made a video using stills from his digital camera.

Can’t afford to rent lights? Use the sun!

Incidentally, we shot some stuff with La Strada indoors, but it didn’t really work in the edit. So, I’m taking my own advice, here. That whole video uses the sun as our light source. For our “playback” device, we used my video iPod and my boombox.

Jack and I have been scouting bands ever since CMJ. We’ve probably seen about 70 or 80 live bands in the last several months. I’m not exaggerating! But since you’ll typically catch 3 or 4 bands per show, it actually adds up pretty quickly.

When we spot a band we like, we approach them. Most of the them get the concept, love the idea, and jump right in.

Then, we meet with the band personally, figure out the type of video they want, then pair them with the appropriate director.

Because we went to NYU (Jack studied film there, I studied Theatre), we know tons of filmmakers. Plus, Next New Networks employs tons of filmmakers and animators. So, we have a huge variety of talent.

Outside of that, we’ve been contacting filmmakers whose work we’ve spotted on the web, in order to extend that network. But it’s all been growing very organically.

And now that the website has launched, and we don’t need to keep the project “secret,” it should be a lot easier to get new talent involved.

As it turns out, making a cool music video for only 99 bucks is hard!

For instance, for the La Strada video, I really wanted to do something thematically linked to Ellis Island immigrants. (I don’t know. It just works with their sound.)

Anyway, I couldn’t rent a boat, obviously. So, we bought tickets on the Ellis Island / Liberty Island Ferry. Only 12 bucks!

Then, we kinda had to act like tourists shooting a home video on the boat and at the islands. It was a bit guerilla-style. We didn’t apply for permits.

We did get shut down (briefly) while shooting in front of the Statue of Liberty. But once we filled out a permit form, they let us get back to shooting. They were really awesome about it, actually. It didn’t even cost a penny for the permit!

We never would’ve gotten away with that if we had a big crew. But we used a small camera and there were only three of us (four, if you count Melissa, who was shooting the Behind-the-Scenes), so we didn’t look too suspicious.

MELISSA SCHNEIDER, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER:

We will feature unique, creative music videos every week. With our variety of filmmakers and bands, I hope it’ll never get tired.

The thing is, it isn’t about the money. It’s about the creativity of the videos. Since all the filmmakers and bands are so talented, every video will be a uniquely cool experience.

TIM SHEY, NEXT NEW NETWORKS:

All of the right things were really there in Jack’s idea from the start, and so the Next New Networks team brought all of that additional thinking — the things that have worked for our networks to date, our experience building communities, our distribution and promotional capabilities, and our creative ideas around interactivity — to the idea of a music videos network. What’s different this time around is that we have the Internet. There’s a huge community of filmmakers and musicians online, not to mention music fans, that we can tap into and really serve with this network. If we do this well,
they’ll become the biggest marketers, distributors, and contributors to this network.

We hope that it could — and if we see the kind of response we hope for, we’ll be adding features to facilitate that. We’ll have more to say on that soon, but right now we’re concentrating on the launch and making sure the network builds a great audience.