Recently, attention was on Taiwan boyband 偶像组合棒棒堂 (just released their new album) whose 咕叽咕叽MV with 孙燕姿 was once again accused as a 'borrowed idea’ from Sophie Ellis Bextor’s ‘Mixed Up World’ MV.
Many 天王天后 MVs in the past were also accused of ‘lifting ideas’ from MVs all over the world. Let me give you a better picture how this ‘lifting of ideas’ actually happened…
Creativity really isn’t much about absolute originality. As an ex-Creative Director with an international advertising agency, I can tell you personally that all creative people find inspirations everywhere including well…ads and MVs. The trick is how to digest these ‘inspirations’ and come up with your own interpretations (you then call it your ‘original’ creative idea).
Taiwan is a market that produced a mass amount of music videos like a factory. The industry is so big in the MV business, you can get an MV shot for under 30K Sing dollars (which is probably two third or half of what you would have to pay to do it in Singapore with lesser known MV directors).
Many 天王天后 MVs in the past were also accused of ‘lifting ideas’ from MVs all over the world. Let me give you a better picture how this ‘lifting of ideas’ actually happened…
Creativity really isn’t much about absolute originality. As an ex-Creative Director with an international advertising agency, I can tell you personally that all creative people find inspirations everywhere including well…ads and MVs. The trick is how to digest these ‘inspirations’ and come up with your own interpretations (you then call it your ‘original’ creative idea).
Taiwan is a market that produced a mass amount of music videos like a factory. The industry is so big in the MV business, you can get an MV shot for under 30K Sing dollars (which is probably two third or half of what you would have to pay to do it in Singapore with lesser known MV directors).
I recently commissioned a famous Taiwan MV director 赖伟康 (who was behind many 天王天后 MVs like SHE's 'Superstar', 王力宏 'Forever Love', 张学友, 蔡依林, 言承旭, etc) to shoot JJ Lin’s SPOP HURRAY! MV (see my favorite MV on the side bar of this blog). He came back with an impressive storyboard. Instead of the usual multiple illustrations of the shots in print, it was in the format of a completed music video cut to the actual length of the song with footages taken from all other TVCs or MVs.
My Taiwanese copywriter (who once worked in a Taiwan production house) told me it is very common for Taiwan MV directors to provide such detailed MV shoot sequence to their customers so that there wouldn’t be any ‘arguments’ over the final outcome of the product. Upon approval from the clients, the MV Directors will then shoot as close as possible to the footages (some may improvise) he showed the clients. Sometimes, they may even delegate it to assistant directors who take over to compose and shoot accordingly.
It is not a surprise to find scenes of the MVs similar to other MVs as a result. Unless you are paying super big budget, don’t expect the directors to ‘kill’ themselves trying to be ‘original’ in every inch of the MV.
At a cost of less than 40K (some can go as low as 30K if you book in bulk) per MV on film (the material used to shoot movie that is many times more expensive than digital format commonly used to shoot our dramas and variety shows), it's really worth it to shoot slick looking MVs in Taiwan (even if some scenes may appear 'familiar').
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