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.
Warpaint – Warpaint:
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/
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