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Through film and video, Michael Jackson extended his music's message, Part 1
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Life imitated art when recording artist Michael Jackson died last week. Like the persona he played in the companion video to Billie Jean, one of his greatest hits, Mr. Jackson slipped away from the world leaving many things around him aglow.
In that music video everything a young bachelor touches as he walks the gritty streets becomes bathed in white light before he disappears from the scene. In real life, the pathways, stair steps and beggar’s cup Mr. Jackson have left glowing are feelings that alight around the world when his fans listen to music that has become the soundtrack for their lives.
Etched in our brains, too, are the visions of dance moves requiring a complete syncing of the body with the brain that most of us unsuccessfully have tried to replicate. And who can forget the center of gravity-defying gangster lean in the video to accompany the track Smooth Criminal.
His being crowned “King of Pop,” doesn’t do much justice to the depth of creativity and business sense that can be gained by a study of his music videos and short films. Through what his collaborators call “hyper-creative” storytelling and marriage of narrative storylines to vocals and choreographed dance, Mr. Jackson carved a method of marketing and self-expression that set the pattern for artists for the past two and a half decades and onward.
In the early 1980’s artists began looking at video as way to get more exposure for their recordings. Many of these attempts were “performance” videos in which artists merely sang or danced to their tracks. For his first album, Off the Wall, Mr. Jackson produced two such videos in which he lip syncs and dances to the music while dynamic blue screens with lights, colors, shapes and movement create energy and visual variety. But he doesn’t stop there. Taken in their entirety, his collection of short films and videos extend the music, the message and more.
“[A]s compelling as his videos often are aesthetically, the insights they provide — into his music, his personae, his world view — go beyond what can be gleaned from the music itself,” wrote Sean Weitner, in his four thousand word article "Michael Jackson: A Life in Film," first published online in Flak Magazine in 2001. “The videos comment on the music and considered chronologically in the context of his albums, paint an appropriately complex picture of one of music's most complex figures.”
With the video to accompany the track Thriller, Mr. Jackson fast forwards the young genre of the music video into the direction of film. Everyone more than knee high in 1982 likely has a story of what it was like for them to watch Thriller, in which the four-minute single is featured in a 13-minute film about a movie date that turns into a dance scene among ghouls at a cemetery.
I remember being scared at the sound of the Vincent Price cackle at the end of the song. For Los Angeles-based music and film producer Harvey Mason Jr., the release of Thriller the video helped to delay his bed time.
“My mom let us stay up late up late to watch it debut and I just remember it being so exciting,” Mr. Mason said in a June 26 telephone interview. “I remember it being something that I had never seen before. It was like a movie rather than a music performance,”
Two decades later, Mr. Mason would get some insight in Mr. Jackson’s creativity. He worked with him for a year and a half on his final album, Invincible, released in 2001. Mr. Mason, an accomplished songwriter and producer also is merging music with film in his role as a producer of the independent documentary film More Than a Game, set for release in theaters across the country this fall.
Photo: Kevin Mazur, AEG: Michael Jackson's final rehearsal at Staples Center in Los Angeles June 23, 2009.
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