Because it is officially finals week I figure it can't hurt to post about something a little lighter. Sigur Rós - Valtari is a beautiful work of art, the music and the music video. The dancers in the video are outstanding and the video itself is just extremely well done. From the editing to the coloring it was just outstanding. While it may be unpleasant to some people I think most can appreciate this piece for what it really is. There is so much that is told visually in this piece; with no dialogue to drive it forward it has to tell the story through the actions and the editing.
The piece is a little lengthy for what is supposed to be a music video however I would consider it a short film and not a music video. Anyway it can be a little unsettling so here are some still photos if you dont feel like looking at the whole video. There is a little bit of nudity but not much.
And for all the cool people here is the link: Valtari
Let me tell you all a little something about Sophie Muller
Good performances come from the heart, and while I was working out in LA no director could pull passion from a performer quite like Sophie Muller.
I was able to work with Sophie on the set of Selena Gomez music video "Good for You". She sat in a laid back green recliner watching a monitor while Selena performed, and after a couple takes they would sit together and talk about her performance. Now "Good for You", as you can tell just from one listen, is a fairly complex song. It's an attempt to put into the words the pride and passion we feel when we want to look good for a person precious to us. It's a song that applies equally to both men and women, and it's a song that is hard to put a visual to. But Sophie did it, and she did a fantastic job.
Sophie's music video's are unique in that they encapsulate the very feeling that the artist seeks to convey through the song.
There's no story to be told here, but rather we are presented with a wealth of sensory information. The way Selena is lit makes us feel like we've just woken up next to her. Her sleepy way of singing and soporific expression conveys to us that we are in an intimate place here. The way she dresses, revealing in a way that only comfy morning clothes are. All of this is done to bring us into Selena's headspace, this is what SHE feels when she sings this song.
Just to further help me illustrate my point, take a look at a music video that she directed early on in her career.
That soft light that so delicate fell upon Selena is no where to be found here, instead Annie Lennox is blasted with a spotlight so bright that on that day she was probably visible from space. Annie doesn't pay any attention to the viewer, instead she cocks her head triumphantly to an invisible audience and gives a performance that it is far more theatrical in nature. We get an uneasy feeling from watching this, it's a satire of course, but presented in a way that seems all to familiar.
Both songs are about feeling, or at least wanting to feel beautiful Yet we can tell from the visuals that there is a distinct contextual difference.
Selena want's to be beautiful in a way that feels comfortable. We see her at her most vulnerable, and in that way we feel as though we've entered an intimate space.
Annie, is presented in a way that makes her look unobtainable, the camera never wants to get in too close. Her body language is closed off and she moves in way that only a jewelry box ballerina can.
Sophie does so much to communicate the emotional weight behind the artist's work, and I cannot think of a single director that can bring out a performance in the way she can!
OK Go is a music group known for their innovative music videos. Their fame started over five years ago when their music video for "Here It Goes Again" became popular for its quirky creative use of treadmills.
For every song OK Go has released, they have made a music video to go along with it that tries to top their last video. "Here It Goes Again" was made with little to no budget and no camera movement at all. Their videos have since expanded to include marching bands, green screens, guile suits, Rube Goldberg machines, musical cars in the desert, and much more. Some of them seen here:
Moving on from all of this though, they recently came out with their latest music video "I Won't Let You Down". This is the most professionally produced video I have seen from them, and the great part is that it goes far beyond the music video. But before I get too ahead of myself check out the music video below:
Pay close attention to the movement of the camera. The ending is the most impressive. And don't forget: one shot.
The video's true quality came with their effective use of the Movi rig.
This rig allowed them to have shots at eye level with the actors and then sporadically go to an ariel shot over the entire scene. But what I actually want to talk about is the transmedia aspect OK Go added to this video.
What is transmedia?
A lot what is sounds like. Different forms of media that are presented in a unified ways to create one larger piece of media – all promoting the same materiel. In this case, their music video. For this they created an entire website with articles, games, and interviews pertaining to the video.
The Game, labeled as "Pre-Visualization", let's you design your own formation of characters and share it with friends as a video concept. This project goes above and beyond any music video I've seen, and I give several hats off to OK Go for not only surpassing the creativity of other music groups, but continually surpassing their own creativity.
I
recently watched M83’s last installment to their music video trilogy. Early on music videos became narrative short films. Now it doesn’t
even matter if the song has any direct relation to the story or that the band
didn't appear in the video at all. The video became an entity unto itself, a
film of its own. Sometimes a story is epic enough to warrant a sequel, and
rarer —a trilogy.
M83’s
trilogy started with the song “Midnight City”.
In
this video we meet a group of children with special telekinetic powers
imprisoned in an asylum. However they escape for a short while and live like
regular kids until they are recaptured from the authorities and put back in
captivity in the second music video installment “Reunion”.
In
the final chapter “Wait” the story reaches a new level of abstraction.
I loved this
music video trilogy. It placed me in a different world. The shots were
breathtaking with the close-ups, landscapes, space travel, nature, etc. The end
of the trilogy wasn’t very conclusive but I liked how it left the story open to
interpretation.
"This video was borne from a dream I had a few months ago about teenagers in their own world, a world with hierarchies and initiations, where the boy who was second in command had acne on his face, and so did the girl who was Queen. I dreamt about this world being so different to anything anyone had ever seen, a dark world full of tropical plants and ruins and sweat. And of this world, I dreamt about tests that didn’t need to." -Lorde
It takes a lot to be able to tell a story in three minutes and twenty seconds. But there's something addictive about the way Lorde's music video to her song "Team" plays out before us. It's almost ironic, coming from an album named Pure Heroine, because it leaves you wanting more and more until you've found you've watched it a dozen times and you're not about to stop. It's a work of creative genius between Lorde, her producer Joel Little, and director Alex Takacs (under the moniker of Young Replicant).
It's like every time you hit replay, something new catches your eye. And slowly you descend into this world where teenagers run amok, free and wild. But to truly understand the beauty of this piece you have to be able to know how storytelling works. Simplistically, a good storyteller is able to put you into the middle of the action, keep you hooked, while providing just enough context for you to figure out what's going on but not to know everything. This type of storytelling is the best in my opinion, because it makes a viewer go from passive to proactive. It puts us in the protagonist's place and it submerges us completely until we don't really know where the lines between reality and fantasy blur.
And while I could go into great lengths as to what this music video did right in terms of filmmaking, there are three major areas that I want to hit: the characters/location, the color scheme, and the camera work. Obviously there's a lot more that goes into the production process but for now these are three things that stood out the most to me.
Characters essentially make or break a story. There have been plenty of films that lost their value due to bad casting, but "Team" sets up a fantastic array of people that match what we didn't know we wanted to expect. From the "protagonist" to the teenagers that idle around the decaying remains of an empty building, this world starts to unfold bit by bit, before us. Almost as if we were the ones with the bag around our heads, we're introduced to this world of different colored skins and clothing. It's realistic. It's essentially a world where teenagers have come together, despite their many physical and cultural differences. And it's eerily comforting. As you walk through the hallways you start to get a feel as to what this world accepts: anyone. From those with disabilities to those of different races, this world blends together in an almost friendly way. It leaves an almost angry itch in you, as your forced to walk away. You want to join in.
But there's something else about this place, that lurks between crumbling corners and hiding behind stained windowsills. It's not pretty, it doesn't pretend to be. Yet this doesn't seem to deter you as much as it seems to make it seem more elegant. A giant castle full of graffiti and chipping paint. It's certainly not the one you wanted to rule as a child, but oddly you're okay with that. It just seems to fit.
This place holds an almost magical feel, but in a dark and cynical way. This isn't Candy Kingdom, and its ruler certainly isn't a bubblegum princess. She rules from the shadows, and her dark colors seem to have stretched across her domain. If "shadow" could be filter that's what I'd say they used. Because even the moments you'd expect to be bright and saturated are diluted. This world takes on a drastic sort of muted look, one that matches its context. Although these people have come together, it's not a perfect society. It's sweaty and dirty, and it's not something free of order (however haphazard it seems to be).
Even as we sit there, watching those huddled amongst fauna to those watching the duel, we can't help ourselves. We want to be a part of this world for however long we could handle it. It's gritty in an outcast sort of way. Like, if we tried hard enough we too could fit in. And although we may not be able to physically accomplish this, we can experience it for a moment through the lens of the camera. As it tracks the progression of events, shaky on its feet, we are allowed to live through it. It creeps over shoulders and moves in close to the faces of those around us. It's as if it too were a character, watching from above: angling down to glimpse the newcomer from around broken corners. But it also slows down when catching the world around it. Watching those that make up its hierarchy climb among the abandoned ruins and chat in the skeleton of windows. It lets us into the wonder of this fantasy. It lets us be an unintentional character.
"Team," itself tells a unique story through its lyrics but it doesn't hit home as hard without the visual story of its music video. It sets up a world that's both whimsical as it is cynical: where teenagers run wild, reigned in by the rules of a leader that courts a mix of darkness and obscurity. For those three minutes and twenty seconds, we experienced years.
Daniels, composed of the same two cinematographers who shot the fantastic Passion Pit music video for the song "Cry Like A Ghost" which we previously viewed in class, are also masters of short comedic videos. One video in particular that I found to be really well shot and edited is the short, Dog Boarding. This video is set to the song "Helena Beat" by Foster The People.
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Daniels) use skateboards with stuffed dogs on top of them and ride them through a skatepark and over various obstacles. They also use a green screen to make the heads of the dog boards seem alive, which I found extremely creative. There are also real (and ridiculously adorable) puppies, shots of which are added and cut in a way that it looks like they are getting stomped down on and slid across half pipes.
In order to make the heads of the dog boards look real, which added to the overall reality of the boards themselves, they filmed the dogs' heads in front of a green screen, then added them to the shots in post production. It's such a simple idea, but it was executed with great precision by Daniels. The cinematography is just as great as the editing. Most if not all of the shots are lit perfectly by natural lighting, and the video cuts to the song in a way that perfectly incorporates the drops of the skateboards to the beat.
Thank god they make it clear that no dogs were harmed in the making of the video, because they look so real!
