Marshall McLuhan is an author whose works are often a main part of college classes in communication theory. He is well known for coining phrases such as “the medium is the message,” meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived. He also coined the phrase “global village,” a term describing the way that electronic communication has “shrunken” the size of the entire world into village proportions because information is transmitted and consumed instantly. Remarkably, these observations came well before the Internet and World Wide Web.

The “medium is the message” is something to consider as you determine your visual identity and video style, for the medium itself has just as much importance (if not more) than the content it carries. In your case, the medium is video, and more specifically, it is a music video.

It is not difficult to ponder how much this idea applies to a music video. If it weren’t for the nature of the ubiquitous video format, music videos would not even exist. Video brought culture and counterculture into everyone’s living rooms. It is front-and-center in the media-consuming lives of most people on the planet. It made its entrance during the lifetimes of the Baby Boomers, and more recently, to the X, Y, and you-name-it generations, making the consumption of video as common and natural as driving a car or reading a newspaper.

Now, with the video medium in the hands of the prosumer, it is even more of a symbiotic relationship. For a long time, anyone could watch a music video. Now, anyone can produce, direct, and star in one. It has empowered artists and musicians as much as it previously empowered businesses and corporations.

Although I refer to him in a few other places, this book is not about Alvin Toffler, yet another great concept of his (that is very relevant) is that of “overchoice.” He noted a long time ago that the expanding universe of goods and services was creating a phenomenon in which there are almost too many choices in our present-day world. Think of the boxes of cereal lined up on your supermarket shelf. It’s overchoice—maybe even overchoice gone mad.

The concept of overchoice can be applied to the numerous styles of music as well. The pile of CDs in Figure 6.1 would represent a tiny fraction of the amount of music styles available today. In the “old days,” you could select from a handful of genres in music—pop, jazz, classical, country, and so on. Today, the list of genres has expanded to encompass styles within styles, and genres within genres.

Figure 6.1. These CDs represent a small fraction of all the music styles to choose from.

Here is just one example of what a list of music genres might look like today:

Did I leave anyone out? I probably did. This is only an example list. There are other genres and other genres within these genres. For example, Heavy Metal can really be broken into further sub-genres, such as Death Metal, Thrash Metal, Black Metal, Power Metal, Progressive Metal, Gothic Metal, Doom Metal, Alternative Metal, Glam Metal, Industrial Metal, Sludge, Stoner, and Speed Metal—not to mention (hold onto your seats, ladies and gentlemen), Christian Metal. So, even with the preceding extensive list, there are many more sub-genres, each with their own particular style, within the main genre.

The question is: Where do you fit in within all of this? What is your genre? What is your style of music?

Perhaps you’re thinking that you don’t fit in with any of these categories. You don’t like to be put in a little box with a little label. Your music is completely original, right? Wrong.

All music is derivative. I know, you probably resent that statement because your music is totally original. It’s so original, in fact, that it defies categorization. You can’t even put a label on it. And while you might think this is a good thing, wait until the marketing department tries to promote your music. They’re going to want to put some sort of label on it, or else they can’t communicate to the world what you are all about (see Figure 6.2).

Figure 6.2. Where does your style fit in? Are you aware of the other styles on the market?

It’s not a bad thing to admit that your music is “sort of like (fill in the blank), with a slight touch of (fill in the blank),” and so on. As a matter of fact, it’s a good thing to be able to position yourself in the marketplace. And when you can do that, you can also get a clearer picture of what it is you want to communicate—not only with your music, but also with your music video.

You will want your music video to express your particular style of music. This is not to say that you cannot push the envelope and break new ground in a particular genre, using a new spin or sporting a new style. Hopefully, you can. However, try to be realistic about it and realize that you are not reinventing the wheel.

Just as it is said by some of the judges on American Idol, you can take a song “and make it your own.” You can do that with your music—and you can do that with your music video.

How do you go about creating, conveying, and projecting your particular style?

You steal it from others.

Okay, okay—please don’t send cards and letters complaining about the suggestion of stealing from others. Let me put it another way. For you to have a starting point for understanding a particular style, you need to know what everyone else has done before you. You wouldn’t, for example, create a Country music video with your group wearing all black clothing, chains, and sporting piercings and tattoos all over their bodies. Nor would you have a Heavy Metal band wearing cowboy gear. Not that there’s any law against it. I just want you to be successful, that’s all.

How do you know what everyone else has done up until now? As stated in a previous chapter, you do your homework—you watch and study tons of music videos, keeping aware of your state of mind. Sometimes you will get caught up in the music video itself, enjoying what you’re watching. That’s fine, but you also must keep an analytical frame of mind so that you are actually doing your homework. Take notes. Discuss what you see with others in your band or on your team.

Then you might consider having a brainstorming session to discuss what you might do to make the style your own. Decide if it might make sense to wear:

Can you see where I’m going with this? These are all things that others have done that were previously unheard of. The queen of this in the musical arena is Madonna, who has not only done these types of things once, but many, many times.

However, for the most part, what she and others have done stylistically was not necessarily done randomly or unplanned. There are exceptions, of course, such as a time in the recent past in which someone put on a pair of Hush Puppies and before long, it became a trend. (Read Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point, which examines the social epidemics around us, for more on this phenomenon.) In the case of the viral spread and rising popularity of Hush Puppies, there wasn’t any prior planning involved. Nevertheless, you can influence culture intentionally or unintentionally by creating an epidemic (stylistically) of your own—and doing it through the medium of music videos is a great way to do it.

Exactly how you do it is up to you.