BOOK: MTV’S ON AIR

I saw this book at Hennessey+Ingalls the other day and it looks like it’s worth adding to the collection. ON AIR: THE VISUAL MESSAGES AND GLOBAL LANGUAGE OF MTV has a pretentious name for what it actually is, which is a collection of recent motion graphics and animation work done for the various MTVs in Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America. This isn’t easy-to-find material so thankfully it also comes with a 70-minute dvd of the idents and promos featured in the book (the sticker on the cover says the dvd plays both NTSC and PAL but don’t hold me to that). Some of the book’s pages can be previewed HERE.

Considering this is a vanity book done for MTV, I was surprised by the honesty of the filmmaker’s quotes in the book. One filmmaker says that MTV pays peanuts for all this material, but everybody still does it because it’s a prestigious platform to have their work seen. Then there was a quote from another filmmaker who was saying how he hadn’t received any work offers as a result of having his work on MTV. Well, at least he got his work published in this book.