Nobody Beats the Drum - Grindin
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.
You can find 'The Making of Star Guitar' if you follow this link: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/706820/chemical_brothers_the_making_of_star_guitar/
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