Music videos can be defined as “short films which integrate a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic reasons.”
I wonder if any of our readers ever experienced feeling particularly inquisitive after watching a music video and wondered about the meaning of its content or storyline, while not being able to clearly figure out what the featured symbols represent or indicate.
We’ve interviewed an interesting YouTuber whose channel has helped many viewers to fathom hidden meanings and agendas found in music videos, films and various clips.
The “Dream Teller” videos are conveniently subbed in English and Spanish, so non-Korean speakers can visit the channel to see if these videos help to quench your thirst in learning more about the subliminal messages and the purpose of your favorite K-pop music videos.
We would like to thank the “Dream Teller” team for giving us a great insight to their channel through this interview.
Would you introduce yourself and please tell us about your YouTube channel, “Dream Teller.”
Dream: Hello, our channel is operated and presented by us, known as “Dream” and “Teller.”
You will hear two different voices as the narrators on our videos. And recently, two additional people have come on board to join our team.
I’m a student, majoring in Graphic Design who is also K-pop fanatic. Teller is very interested in
Psychology-related topics, he is also incredibly talented at observing and interpreting videos.
And we happen to be both males.
The purpose of our channel is to reveal esoteric meanings behind music videos and movies, share
those interesting factors as we look deeper into those themes and discuss them with our viewers.
We cover not only K-pop videos but we broaden our topic by including music videos, films,
Animation made in Britain and the States. Since the actual nature of videos is practically the same.
How did you first start interpreting music videos, films on YouTube?
Dream: I’ve always enjoyed watching music videos and miscellaneous types of videos in general.
I initially started watching music videos because I liked the celebs featured in them; then I came to the realization that a lot of the scenes on the videos indicated brilliant metaphors that could not be ignored or bypassed.
We wanted to share these interesting factors with other people and also wanted to hear opinions from the viewers as well, since we can’t figure everything out by ourselves!
Out of all the videos you’ve uploaded, which video are you the most attached to?
We are truly attached to all the videos we’ve so far produced but if we were to pick one, just one…then I would have to choose the video theory video on Blood, Sweat and Tears by BTS,
[MV Theory] BTS – Blood, Sweat and Tears: How did V corrupt the BTS (Youth)?
The music video tells a story of “the youth who are going through their youthful years” by the K-pop group, BTS, showing scenes of the members’ going through fears about growing up, and comforting those who feel regretful about their youthful years are ending – the kind of themes that the viewers can relate to – at the same time, the actual music video was so well produced in terms of the visual.
I got the impression that this music video consisted of all the elements of the activities, music videos, songs and concerts BTS has ever had, all combined into one video. And it seemed like this video was displaying the climax of it all.
In real life, K-pop artists make a lot of effort to convey certain themes in their work; so these videos are not produced just to appear and look cool. It was like this video was displaying a competitive fight of the production. While I was interpreting it, I even felt slightly feverish myself.
Then it suddenly hit me that this is the reason why music videos have to considered as form of beautiful work of art.
Where would you say your channel is categorized under?
Dream: Our channel could simply be categorized as Music, but we feel that it can also be regarded as Art, when we broaden up the field a bit more.
We feel this way, because the examples of metaphors shown in the videos start with the staged Art, and our videos are about interpreting them from a psychological and social point of view.
We are also with hope that K-pop artists and the music video industry overall will be regarded more broadly as Art to the public.
What kind of people subscribe to the Dream Teller channel?
Dream: If we were to talk about age and gender of our subscribers, the majority of them are females aged from 17 to 24 years of age. We think that is because we cover a lot of videos on social issues as well as decoding stories based on psychology.
There are mostly subscribers who are in the K-pop fandom, who seem to be interested to know what kind of messages their artists are trying to convey and if they want to learn more about music video interpretation, so they visit our channel to view our videos.
Did you expect your channel would attract this many subscribers?
Dream: Truthfully speaking, my colleague, “Teller” did admit that he was expecting the channel would get this much interest. But the channel has grown much more rapidly than he predicted; and I was so very happy with the outcome at the end of last year.
Because I was purely engrossed with the process of producing videos, I had zero expectation that we’d get this many subscribers, so I am just both incredibly surprised and content.
We’ve developed our own know-hows to edit and produce our videos more strategically, in order to set goals a little higher to construct this process for a bigger picture than we did ever before.
What kind of music do you listen to usually?
Dream: If you looked at the uploaded videos on our channel, you will easily be able to guess what type of music I’m into. I am a K-pop fan obviously. I love the idols’ star power and I find it cool that their music is so addictive, easy to sing along to, as well as having subliminal messages behind the music.
But as I mentioned before, our channel also has contents covering videos on Clean Bandit, Adele, Troye Sivan, Sia and etc, not to limit our work solely on K-pop.
Fyi, “Teller” likes Hip Hop and is an Eminem fan.
What do you like to do in your spare time? Do you have any hobbies and other interests?
We must admit that we take the time to “over-watch” various types of videos, and whenever we get any free time, we try to spend it with our friends as much as we can.
We can’t spare a lot of time on other leisure after we spend time, working on this and that.
We miss seeing our friends and feel sorry that we’re not spending much time with them as before. This doesn’t seem like I am answering your question on what how we spend our spare time well, lol.
Honestly, when we first started making videos we considered this as our hobby, that’s why I can’t think of a different hobby or interest we have to state at this moment.
In Korea, this is known as 덕업일치, which means having a job that you enjoy and obsessed with.
Please let us know about your plans and goals for Dream Teller for 2017?
Our goal is to show our viewers the “uniqueness” only our channel could offer, while maintaining the current state of the vibe we give out to the viewers. So when someone views one of our videos, they can easily identify that the work is done by us, “Dream Teller.”
And we wish that “Dream Teller” to become a common pronoun; much like a brand.
— J. Chung.