The music video was Co-Directed by Tracy Maurice, Olivier Groulex and Vincent Morriset. In this online interactive music video, the interactivity consists of the audience being able to control what they hear – which I find kind of found really annoying, I mean that point of music videos is to hear the song, not to create your own version.
Arcade Fire – Neon Bible:
The music video for ‘Neon Bible’ is also an online interactive music video that lets you control what you see in front of you. For example it lets you turn over the hands of the actor so that you can see what he is holding on the underside. I didn’t like the video, in fact I don’t like this ‘new’ style of music video, I think that the whole production just takes the audience’s attention away from the music.
Vincent Morriset:
Vincent morriset is a director, programmer and inventor that was born in Montreal, Canada. He describes work as ‘cinematic activity’, and he says he also likes to push mediums’ boundaries. Morriset’s short films have been shown worldwide and since the release of the Funeral album he has been responsible for all of arcade fires web projects. He is also always looking for new ways to tell stories.
‘Haushka’ is the stage name of Volker Bertleman, a German experimental pianist. He is known for reworking and manipulating the ‘complex inner workings’ of the instruments he uses, in order to create new and unusual sounds.
The music video for his track Morgenrot is created by Jeff Desom, a young filmmaker who was born and raised in Luxemburg. Jeff explains the track as being “about a composer who is plagued by writers block that physically manifests itself as a bone growing from his skull” This video is rather similar to the earlier discussed ‘Black Mirror’ music video, that was directed by Olivier Groulex, because of the use of the sepia images of 20th century New York. Even this video appears
to me to contain actual forage of a piano falling, Jeff reveals that “The finished animation is mostly made from early 20th century photographs that I found whilst browsing through the vast
collection of the U.S. Library of Congress. I would only zoom into a tiny proportion of the picture and utilize that as my frame.”
The Red Hot Chili Peppers – The Zephyr Song:
The couple Jonathon Dayton and Valerie Faris directed this video in December 2002. The band wanted to create a psychedelic image for themselves throughout several music videos. They asked for the video to ‘The Zephyr Song’ to appear like a kaleidoscope. The directors had this to say about the video: “John and Flea wanted something incredibly, just kind of obscure and psychedelic. Finding true psychedelia in this day and age is really hard to do, because everyone wants to rely on computers and all the stuff that really doesn't know how to find the core of psychedelia. So I had my reservations, but, uh, there are some moments in this video where I think it's captured”
I don’t really know mush information about Volker or his style of music, but from what I can gather from comments on YouTube and other opinions of this video by other viewers, is that it has managed to perfectly represent his ‘style, character and personality’. http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/1125/-jeff-desom-and-haushka12/10/11
“The band employs traditional and electronic instruments. Their sound is often categorized as psychedelic pop, folk rock and experimental.” The video directed by Sean Pecknold (Grandchildren Studio) managed to create a video that represents the main characteristics of the band, such as their ‘psychedelic’ and ‘experimental sides’ were shown in the way that the video looks as like it was conducted as an experiment and there was obviously a very trippy feel to the video. Another thing that I noticed, is that all the colours that were used in the video were all really mellow, maybe this was intentional, to try to match the melodic song and the ‘acoustic’ instruments.
James is an artist and filmmaker that were born in Scotland. His main identification throughout his videos is his unique use of colourful retro aesthetics. I found this really awesome interview with James on this site http://inksie.com/journal/james-houston/ . It contains a lot of information about his processes of video making and particularly about his video ‘Big Ideas (don’t get any)’.
Official Secrets act – So Tomorrow:
James Houston quotes: “The most recent project I was involved in was to create a promo video for ‘So Tomorrow’ by Official Secrets Act. They knew my work from seeing my graduation video for Radiohead ‘Big Ideas (don’t get any)’ video online, and asked me to create something for them. This was my result”:
“I made this video with the shortest turnaround I’ve ever had on a project – DV footage was shot of the band performing in London and then transported to me in Glasgow for my magic to begin. The frames around the video are based on old arcade cabinet bezels, and were used to bump up the resolution”.
Grizzly Bear – Knife:
This video was directed by Ghost Robots Encyclopedia Pictura. “This music video is rich in colour, intriguing and the plainly bizarre.” Encyclopedia Pictura is a congealed version of Isaiah Saxon and Sean Hellfritsch. Both of these people have been alive since 1983. Since then they have mostly been growing taller in the town of Santa Cruz and then working hard and tough in the town of San Francisco. They are interested in Virtual Reality, Psychokinetic Energy, Anarcho-Primitivism, Clowning, Cryptozoology, Natural Geometry, Psychedelic Shamanism, and Fruit Sandwiches. They also take part in the group Mangello Tipperary, along with artist Daren Rabinovitch. Their next project is a stereoscopic jungle musical for Devendra Banhart.”
“It doesn’t make sense; it doesn’t want to make sense.” Personally I didnt really like this video, I just found the song and the video difficult to connect with, I found that it didnt really draw the audiance in, even tho it was kinda an exciting video, I guess I can't really explain why.
Radiohead (Nude) cover – Big Ideas (don’t get any):
From an interview James quotes: “It was never intended to be a Radioheadproject. Dr. Roland Shregle from Ganjatron.net wrote a tutorial back in the dark ages of the Internet on how to replace a default sound file that’s inside every HP scanner. The original file is Fur Elise and was intended as an Easter egg for early technology enthusiasts. I couldn’t help but notice the excellent bass sound and so the next logical step was to find other instruments that would accompany my bassist. Look Around You probably inspired the final treatment.”
He continues to explain: “I grouped together a collection of old redundant hardware, and placed them in a situation where they’re trying their best to do something that they’re not exactly designed to do, and not quite getting there.”
Parody = A parody or a ‘spoof’ of a video means to imitate a previously made video in order to mock, belittle or to comment on it in a comical manner. They are created with the purpose of making fun or taking the mick of the original video or film.
Foo Fighters – Everlong:
Everlong is yet another music video made by the genius that is Michel Gondry. He is responsible for directing Dave Grohl and crew, in this revamp parody of the Horror film The Evil Dead from 1995.
Reference = A reference of something or someone is to mention them. If a band was to make a reference to another band in a video, it means that they would do something, an action for example, that the audience would recognise as relating to the band that was referenced. Another way would be for the other band to actually be featured in the video, by way of photographs or clips. For example: Maroon 5s video ‘Moves like Jagger’, which could also be counted as a homage.
Kasabian – Vlad the Impaler:
Directed by Richard Ayoade, the Kasabians music video for ‘Vlad the Impaler’ is a parody of (as the title tells us) Vlad the Impaler – or as some people know him, Dracula. It features comedian Noel Fielding (The Mighty Boosh’s Vince Noir) playing the character of Vlad, in the video he appears stalking people, walking around a lot carrying a large sharpened stick and then towards the end ‘impaling’ people with that stick.
Queen - Radio Gaga:
David Mallet directed the brilliant ‘Metropolis’ referencing music video ‘Radio Gaga’. The film contains several clips and reconstructions from the 1927 science fiction film that was directed by Fritz Lang. Because of the varsity of the classic Metropolis film, it would have been virtually impossible to be allowed to use clips of it in a music video. However, Queen were granted rights to the films footage, due to the fact that a solo song of Freddie’s ‘Love Kills’ was featured in the revamped version of the classic by Giorgio Moroder. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Ga_Ga#Video 25/10/11
Homage = Homage is an act of respect and admiration. I terms of music videos, people often copy an original video with their own spin on it, and they would end up with a near identical piece of work as a music video to their own song. Videos that pay homage are usually created for the purpose of paying tribute to the original video or band.
M. Ward – Chinese Translation: Directed by Eric Johnson and Joel Trussell. This is an animated video that is reminiscent of the short story ‘The Three Questions’, written by the Late Leo Tolstoy. I think it is playing homage to the story. The book told the story of a king that wanted to find the answers to what he considered to be the three most important questions of his life. The questions that the book was based around were “What is the best time to do each thing? Who are the most important people to work with? What is the most important thing to do at all time? The three questions in the song/video are “What do you do with pieces of a broken heart? How can a man like me stay in the light? If life is really as short as they say, then why is the night so long? The way that the video switches the story is that “In the Tolstoy story, the king "finds the answers" when he unknowingly helps a person who is trying to hurt him. In this song, the old man simply tells the younger man he is a "young fool who is afraid to do the things he has to do."
The music video for Paul Marshalls new ‘Keep Your Eyes on the Road’ is homage to Peter Gabriel’s song ‘Sledgehammer’. It is made up of mostly stop-motion animations, the same as the video by Peter. The original was made by Aardman Animations of Bristol, and involved Gabriel lying under a pane of glass for sixteen hours for the frame-by-frame stop motion to be completed. The scene with the two oven-ready turkeys was animated by Oscar winner Nick Park, some of his first screened animation - long before Wallace and Gromit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sledgehammer_(song)#Music_video25/10/11
Grindin' is a song released by the Dutch electro group 'Nobody Beats the Drum' to which a stop-motion video was created by one of the group’s visual artists, Rogier Van Der Zwaag. The video consisted of a series of painted wooden blocks bouncing, sliding, disappearing and appearing in time with the beats and changes of pitch in the song.
The video was set out in a square symmetrical pattern. It is suggested that the team built only a small section of the overall image such as a vertical straight or corner. The actions and movements of the blocks would have been performed in this area and they ‘mirrored’ the production by using editing software such as Premier.
The video was created from 4085 photos and they were taken from the different positions of over 400 blocks that were being used. They were positioned on a plain black background, which enhanced the colours of the blocks and created a good base colour to fill the screen when the music and visual action paused in-between bars.
Towards the end of the song, it started to speed up and there was a sequence in the video where it repeated all of the previously used movements in a series of quick breakdown flashes.
Cajun Dance Party - Colourful Life
Russell Weeks created the music video of Colourful Life, a song released by ‘Cajun Dance Party’. It consisted of a long scene of watching a car drive along a series of busy roads. The camera was positioned so that the backlights of the car were the main focus of the frame throughout the video. The element that made the video interesting was the fact that there were heart shaped auras positioned around each light that came into the frame on the cars journey.It is suggested that Russell used some sought of filter on the camera he used, to create the heart around the lights. Otherwise he may have used a tracking effect to position the hearts during the editing stage. The video didn’t exactly match the song in the same way that ‘Grindin’ had done, such as the stop-motion in time with the score. However it matched in the way of the feeling that the sound and the visual both gave the audience. The colours of the hearts were ‘mellow’ pastels such as yellows, oranges and blues. The gentle colours matched the gentle rhythm and lyrics of the song. The video took the everyday occurrence of driving and turned it into a slightly more interesting activity from the help of the effects on the lights.
The Chemical Brothers – Star Guitar:
From ‘The making of Star Guitar’ video you can get a real sense of how difficult it really was for Michel Gondry to direct this video. The video shows that he worked out the timing of the beats in different stages – mapping out the different dynamics on graph paper in layers, and then adding more and more layers. It looked a very complex process, and it started quite difficult to see how it could actually work in the end, but as he built up layer upon layer of beats and symbols with the examples of the song playing whilst he tapped on the corresponding sign, the video layout really started to take shape. After mapping out all the positions, he assembled a mini try-out of his set up, by using objects such as forks, drinking glasses, video tapes and oranges. He then recorded this set up as he moved along one side (the recording looked to smooth for him to have walking – perhaps he used a skateboard or something similar) He then played this recording back with the track played over.
It isn’t very uncommon to find music videos that don’t feature the band members themselves in one way or another. However, the majority of bands nowadays do only have a video that is a plain recording of them performing, there aren’t many to be found that actually involve the band doing productive.
Caribou – She’s the One:
Directed by Daniel Eskils, this music video combines both live action and animation. The animated parts consist of what looks like little cardboard cut-outs of the band members and their instruments that appear at the corners of the screen. There is also a little bird cut-out that flies around the scene occasionally. I think that this bird takes significant status in the video, from the title you presume that the song is about a girl, but the video begins to suggest that the song is about the relationship between a man and his bird (some breed of Parrot I think).
Fanfarlo – Harold T. Wilkins:
The video to this track is by Stachemou, the duo of Klaas Diersmann and Dan Sutherland. . There is also another video for this track that can be found on YouTube that is called ‘How to wait for a Long Time’. In the Vimeo video, the members of Fanfarlo are examined for their ‘paranormal potential’, in a lab, by two scientists – Harold and T, Wilkins – hence the song title. To veiw the video please follow this link: http://vimeo.com/2966431
Blur – Country House:
The video for ‘Country House’ is what I would call a perfect example of this music video genre. It features the band members competing in a giant game of ‘Escape the Rat Race’. Damien (The lead singer) is looking into the camera and miming the lyrics for the majority of the video, whilst the other band members and characters run around frantically in the background. The video follows a suited character around the board and other locations that are featured in the actual song. As we follow him around, his actions match up with the lyrics, as well as some lyrics being written on pieces on the board. From 2:20 – 2:40 the video turns into a bit of a ‘parody’ of the video Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, with the four band members standing together in the same position and an opaque copy of them, rotating in the outside of the screen.
To try to describe this genre of music video, the best way would be to say that, the director would have created a strong image of this surrealistic imaginary world in his mind prior to producing a video. Everyone know how detailed and complex thoughts and ideas are, it is one of the hardest processes in media and film making to try to draw this world to the mind satisfaction in a way that comes across clearly to an audience. It is even harder, to create a detailed plot that is to be acted out in a detailed landscape, to fit into the space of a three minute something music track. The director has to find a way to literally ‘paint a snapshot’ of his world, by picking out the key points and events that are to happen.
Beach House – Used To Be:
‘Used to be’ has an awesome animated music video, produced by Grandchildren – Sean Pecknold in 2010. The video consists of two stories running side by side – one about a freaky manikin type model with bright red eyes miming the lyrics into the camera and the other following a young girl model manikin as she undertakes some sort of a journey on a cloud like floating cone. In an interview, Sean was asked if he was worried about managing to create a music video that is as beautiful as the original track, this was his reply: “You can’t sike yourself out by worrying about that. You just have to close your eyes, let all the fear in, count to ten then open your eyes and go and make something cool.” http://kjphotos.tumblr.com/post/2126984196/portraits-of-seattle-2-sean-pecknold
M. Ward – Requiem:
The music video ‘Requiem’ was directed by Santi G. Aguado, with Jose Luis Pulido responsible for the cinematography. This video includes different mediums, such as a form of Stop-Motion animation and live action. Santi recorded the footage for this video in Barcelona (2007). It features an older man, walking round several different ‘deserted’ locations. With his actions occasionally matching the lyrics that we hear, such as at the beginning, when we are shown feet as we hear feet. This video very cleverly gives us little clues into the background of the character that we are following, showing us certain objects or places at the same time that we hear lyrics, that while being connected create little mini stories, helping to build up the story of the life of the character – and therefore creating the world as we watch. An example is the point at 0:52 were we see the medal lying next to the books and at the same time we hear Ward sing ‘In war he was a tiger’.
Talking Heads – Once In a Lifetime:
The music Video for ‘Once in a Lifetime’ consists of the bands lead Singer David Byrne standing against a white screen whilst dancing a bit like a puppet or a ‘Marionette’. Occasionally, photographs of people from all around the world appear on the screen behind of him. He also performs a range of different dances that are significant in some countries. In several sections of the video, they use a copycat style of production; with ‘mini’ David’s dancing the same routine in the background as the ‘big’ David is dancing in the foreground. It is said, that certain aspects of the dance (such as eye twitches, sudden arm flicks and sharp intakes of breathe) are influenced by epilepsy attacks on sufferers.
I must say, I am completely in love with this song and video! I really do think it is just awesome. ‘Warpaint’ is a relatively new release from the band that is also called Warpaint. Their video features an underwater world refreshing and recovering the dead lives of four unhappy women (acted by Warpaint girls).
The video begins by setting up the background for the actors, revealing their stories and showing us how they come to be underwater. This beginning sequence is all in black and white, and then, as soon as the girls reach the water, they literally come to life, as the entire underwater sequence is presented in very bright colours. Then video then ends with the girls pulling up to the surface, and having once left the sea, the world is restored back unto colour. The bands opinion on the video is as followed: “We’ve always had the idea to do a video underwater, and were excited when our friend Ted Newsome sent us a treatment, which involved just that. It was an opportunity to create a fantastical world where oxygen, time and style were simply not an issue. Turned out to be far more challenging than we had initially expected, but we pulled through.”http://newmusicmichael.com/wordpress/2011/07/warpaint-warpaint-video/
