Vice preps music video format

MIPTV: Youth-skewing multimedia outfit Vice Media has revealed more details about its ambitious new music format, in which bands, actors and directors collaborate to film music videos live.

Live In Front of a Studio Audience will be an eight-part, hour-long series for the new music-themed channel that Vice and music promoter Live Nation are set to launch online a month from now.

“If you walk around MipTV there are a lot of music formats that, generally speaking, fall into a few categories: competition reality shows trying to find out who’s the best singer or who’s the best dancer,” Eddy Moretti, chief creative officer at network owner Vice Media, told delegates in Cannes.

“We sat down and thought, ‘Can we not do better? Can we not push creative bounds forward in the music entertainment space and come up with something that’s never been done before?’”

The youth-skewing media firm first tested the concept of filming a live music video with Arcade Fire and director Spike Jonze at the YouTube Music Awards in 2013.

Vice showed a promo of the format, which featured artists such as Eminem, MIA and Avicii, and actor Jason Schwartzman, to delegates.

The series will be distributed alongside other half-hour or 60-minute music-related formats online by Vice before eventually making it on to other platforms, including TV, Moretti added.

“With today’s technology and the multitude of content platforms out there, anything you do with a little bit of imagination and passion can reach and engage with a new audience unlike ever before,” said Alex Miller, global head of content at Vice.