A crack in the ground and a post-modern — maybe even post-apocalyptic — dance begins...

What if the government made a channel play music videos? And prevented any other music video channels from being on the dial, so long as that channel played 12 hours a day of music videos.  And, backed it up with a funding program to provide budget assistance to foster artists and creatives?

Sounds like a dream, right? That's the situation in Canada actually, where multimedia company Bell Media's reigning video channel Much — formerly MuchMusic — is suddently regretting that exact situation. The channel has a near monopoly on the dial, but with a license agreement that required it to have at least 50% of its programming be music videos. And a large block of those had to be by Canadian recording artists and/or produced or directed by Canadian talent. And to make sure there was always content, there was a funding program that paid up to $30k per video.

But, even that's not enough if Bell Media president Kevin Crull's assessment last month is correct: "Kids do not watch music videos on television. You're not going to wait for somebody to program a music video when you have a million available on Vevo. And so that has hurt the channel." And per The Globe and The Mail, MuchMusic reportedly lost just-under $1.5 million last year as ad revenue fell by nearly 30%.

Much has been unsuccessfully trying to officially prune back their music video content for years — a 2010 petition to reduce it to 25% was rejected by the the CRTC (essentially the Canadian equivalent of the FCC) — perhaps with an eye on how South of The Border channels like MTV and Vh1 have been able to constantly reinvent themselves, even while keeping music integrated with their other programming..

For now, Bell Media is stuck with a channel that made perfect sense when founded in 1984, but is now itching to evolve. Last week Bell Media announced the layoffs of 91 staffers at Much and sister channel M3, with the cancellation of most of their music shows.

Tick, Tick, Tick...

Not only do the make-up, extensions, and other glam crutches come off in this revealing new Colbie Caillat video, but so does the extensive post-fx beauty work, getting wiped away to reveal that humans have — wait for it — pores, wrinkles, etc.

A lovely example of small-scale (or is it large-scale?) stop-motion storytelling by animator Simon Roberts... All painstakingly constructed and captured by hand, as is evident in this short Making-Of that tells all you need to know...

Sometimes something happens that shifts things irrevocably. "Elysium" calls to mind the AG Rojas shortfilm Cody — They were in Taft, CA for a video shoot when a school shooting occured, thus providing an opportunity for a haunting and personal look at how to get by in a world like that.

This time we're in Settle, where director James Marcus Haney was shooting a video with his brother and friends — presumably a lifestyle piece — but then reality hit in the shape of a camus shooting... 

James Marcus Haney, director: [h/t: NPR]

"'Elysium' was one of those tracks that became very personal to me very quickly. It made me think about my younger brothers and their transition from kids to adulthood — how they are carving out their individuality and quickly leaving youth, innocence, and wide eyes behind.

"Brother don't grow up.... /Just hope that age does not erase all that you've seen/Don't let bitterness become you/Your only hopes are within you."

With the video, I wanted to capture elements of that transitional experience in my brother, Turner's, life. I wanted to film him and his real friends doing actual things that they normally do. I wanted to document the actions and emotions of people at this age — the highs, the lows, the noteworthy and the mundane. I wanted to get inside what it feels like to be a teenager today. On a personal level, I wanted to freeze the last remnants of youth still left in my brother — to record him in this tender, fleeting age of early college years.

Soon after I arrived in Seattle to begin filming, an armed man walked onto Turner's college campus and shot four students. One of them died. I was staying on my brother's couch in his campus dorm room, living amongst sixty or so sophomore boys. The name of the slain student was not released, and no one knew when it would be. As hours passed by into night time, one student was still left unaccounted on my brother's floor, four rooms down from us. One of the dorm-mates decided to sleep in the hallway just outside the elevator to wait for the missing student, so that he would wake up when the missing student came home. Others followed suit until the entire dorm floor hallway was filled with mattresses and students unable to sleep, all waiting for the elevator door to open.

"When the victim's name was released the next day, the fears were confirmed. Turner's friend and dorm-mate, Paul Lee, was dead. With the music video as a last priority, I was thankful just to be with my brother — to support him, to be near him. In his dorm room, he played the song 'Elysium' over and over. A few of the other kids played it a lot too, and sent it around. While in the midst of a dormitory full of very broken and lost students, I couldn't stop listening to the song either — it took on a whole new weight and meaning.

That weekend, my brother and his friends wanted to finish the video, in honor of Paul. The end result is a video that depicts real friends, real teenagers, experiencing something far too real."