Radiohead - House of Cards

This video from English rock band Radiohead, is probably the most truly experimental video ever created.



Not only does it look nifty and fit the low-key mood of the song, it also was created using no cameras. Yes that's right, what you are seeing in this video is pure data. They used two pieces of technology in order to scan the 3D images they wanted to use. The first was used to capture small things in a very detailed sense, Thom Yorke's face would be one example. And the second was used to capture large scenes but in less detail. The rather bizarre way in which the data is represented gives the video an almost dream like quality, which is probably something they were attempting in the creation of this video technique. And the final point to be made here is that it makes the video watchable, if this video had just been filmed normally it would have made for very boring viewing. This gimmick, as some would call it, turns it into mesmerising viewing, and a template for videos in the future.

Plastiscines - Barcelona

I first saw the Plastiscines at a show in Boston in 2009 and I was beguiled by them from the very first chord. A all-girl French rock band from just outside of Paris, I remember their beauty and stage presence sucked me in completely, a welcome feminine distraction from the grimey punk band on just before.

Catchy, glam and full of power, the music video for Barcelona has a distinct French feel to it, made more accessible with rock music. A pretty simple video, the band playing in front of a white backdrop, it still works, the split screens, dress, the colours and the way the video is shot evokes feelings of the 60s and 70s and pretty girls definitely make it alot more enjoyable. Pretty French girls who play their musical instruments well and hold a great camera presence definitely help. Their full-length album, About Love has some gems in French and in English, like Camera and Bitch, more great catchy girl rock.

Random music video concepts

Every now and then there’s one of those music videos that has a completely random concept, like OK Go’s video for “Here It Goes Again”.

Released in 2006, it’s known as ‘The Treadmill Video’. The content of the video doesn’t really have anything to do with the lyrics of the song and there are no musical instruments or singing (apart from some lip-synching while they jump around on the treadmills), but the choreography and creativity managed to win it a swag of awards and millions of views on YouTube.

This music video got me thinking of two things: first, just how random a music video concept could be while still being entertaining and adding something to the song; and second, just how much you can do with 8 treadmills.

Cosmo Jarvis

Classically, when a child is at home playing in his dress-ups as a pirate, we don't ever even come close to linking the idea of a pirate with the concept of homosexuality, but in the mind of the front man for the increasingly popular British outfit, Cosmo Jarvis seems to have made that link. Cosmos' train of thought was that if "one in every ten men are gay" then, when pirates sailed the seas as we traditionally think, there must have been gay pirates and it would have been horrible to be on board a ship and to be in love with one of your fellow pirates. The song is cute, thats pretty much the only word i could think of to describe it. The film clip is even more creative, and i believe it has a strong link to the Shakespearean text "The Twelfth Night" where a pirate named Antonio is in love with a man named Sebastian. Have a watch of the video and see how you like it.  Regardless of your views on the topic, you have to admit its a damn catchy tune and the film clip seems to be a homage to a shakespearean play. Enjoy!

Rage Against The Machine - Renegades of Funk

'Renegades of Funk' is RATM's cover of hip hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa's original from 1983, the original video is included at the bottom of this post so you can watch it in all its 1980's glory!

Rage Against the Machine - Renegades of Funk

Rage's version, released in 2000, part of their covers album, Renegades, released after Zach De La Rocha's departure, prior to the Audioslave years with Chris Cornell. This powerful version is much more imposing than the original thanks to Tom Morello's massive guiter power-riff.

A fitting homage to early 'renegades' who many owe so much, featured in the video, like Sitting Bull, Martin Luther King Jr and other musical pironeers, themselves renegades of funk like George Clinton, Grandmaster Flash and others considered heroes to millions, Che Guevara, Cesar Chavez, Black Panthers, who stuck it to the man, that evil, evil oligarchy - the U.S. Government.

With more recent icons featured, like Public Enemy and De La Soul, leading up to a great infectious ending - Jam sucka, groove sucka, dance sucka, move sucka.

Coming from a different place geographically, musically, socially and in time, this video is great props to decades of great music.

Poppin', sockin', rockin' puttin' a side of hip-hop

Sigur Rós - Glósóli

While the last blog post I wrote featured one of my least favourite videos, this one will cover one of my favourite music videos. The song is written by Sigur Rós, a Post-Rock band from Iceland. This band is well known for creating interesting music videos, with their video for Viorar Vel Til Loftarasas generating much controversy in their home country. Nevertheless I believe Glósóli stands as the pinnacle of their music videos.

Personally I love music videos that tell a story, and I believe many of the best videos are ones that are made to be almost like mini theatrical films. This video is a prime example of that. The cinematography is something that stands out to me as being a defining characteristic of this video, I would even go as far to say it features better cinematography than many films.

Aside from the technical aspects, this video also succeeds in telling the story of the journey of a group of young children from what looks like a desolate wasteland, to their eventual arrival at the sea as they fly off into the clouds. This is a rather simple story, but I believe this works in its favour, as it makes the story easy to understand. One of my favourite parts of the video is when the children glimpse the coastline and the music picks up as they eventually run and jump into the air. This, to me, is an extremely powerful example of the emotional effect that the combination of music and visuals can create, and something that most videos do not even attempt to do.

All these aspects come together to make this one of the most powerful video clips I've ever seen.

Slightly ahead of their time

Before Vampires were cool, and then subsequently became un-cool, The four Ivy league students from the US released A-punk. The song burst into popularity, well maybe burst is the wrong word, but slowly and over a few years the band has grown immensely in popularity. Personally, the film clip depicts the financial situation of the band, and to be honest, is pretty boring. Not really much happens and with only one scene and nothing really that creative going on, its a bit lame. I don't rate is very well...much more could have been done with the song

Music videos with a story: Everlong and Learn to Fly

Today we take a look at two music videos with a story, where the band members also play the characters in the videos: Learn to Fly and Everlong by the Foo Fighters. Both videos tell a short story – in Learn to Fly the coffee has been spiked and the pilots can’t fly the plane. The plot in Everlong is more complicated, switching between two different dreams and reality.

In Learn to Fly, the band members play not only themselves, but pilots, air hostesses, an obese woman, a school girl, a baby, and others. The best part of this video is the irony of the band members checking themselves and each other out in character and vice versa, e.g. Dave Grohl dressed as a schoolgirl getting excited about seeing Dave Grohl; and the rest of the band checking out Taylor Hawkins dressed as an air hostess.

Everlong is one of those awesome 90s music videos with everything – it’s got a clever plot, a reference to Sid and Nancy and a ‘save the whales’ jumper. Overall, it’s just a creative music video, e.g. check out the bit from 4:00- 4:18 where the band peels themselves out of their characters.

Theatrical Videos: Meat Loaf & Muse

In this post, I wanted to explore grand, theatrical music videos. There is nowhere else really to start but with Meat Loaf, even his song titles ooze theatrics, like “Life is a Lemon and I Want my Money Back” and the archetypal Meatloaf song “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”.

The video gets off to a powerful start with a motorcycle engine revving gruffly and guitar screeching, subsiding into the iconic piano accompaniment (emulated by Architecture in Helsinki recently). It makes use of all the blue-lights, shadows and pyrotechnics available and every candle from every Stevie Nicks video. Lyrically, the video is repetitious. It could be argued the point is never reached. What won’t he do? Who knows, it has never been defined.

The statuesque beauty featured has a great time bathing sensuously in clinging wet fabric and being devoured by a massive bed, cue writhing lesbians. It is worth noting at this point that the female vocalist is not the legged beauty featured. She only received a minor payment for her contribution to this song and no credit or recognition.

This video is as theatrical as they come, a modern play on Beauty and The Beast well-known fairy tale. This video uses all the tricks in an early 90s music video director’s arsenal – light play, smoke, mirrors, alternate dimensions, pretty girls, ugly blokes, lesbians, all to keep a highly repetitious, overly-long, dramatic musical epic as interesting and engaging as possible. For one, this writer is totally hooked!

To contrast The Loaf with a more contemporary theatrical video, Knights of Cydonia by Muse is a perfect example. Muse are not known for making the best music videos or spending much money on them for that matter, look at Plug In Baby, CGI effects from MS Paintbrush. Conversely, Knights of Cydonia is a triumph, resembling a futuristic ‘Spaghetti’ Western complete with kitsch moustache.

Chanting and Beach Boy-esque guitar starts off the fun. Low-end special effects fit seamlessly with the feel of the video. Cydonia, a futuristic western outpost dominated by a ruthless despotic ruler, holding the blonde beauty against her will, enter our handsome cowboy protagonist. He starts to mix things up, fighting with the locals and a passionate bedroom romp, look carefully for 70s film director and film crew appearing in the mirror inadvertently (or intentionally?) at their bedside.

As we reach the chorus, the action starts, with Muse’s lyrics like ‘No one’s going to take me alive” and ”You and I must fight to survive”, mouthed by the hero, pushing the strong anti-authority message, as does our beauty, while on the gallows from her over-plumped lips.

This video has it all! Attractive heroes, Kung Fu fighting, an oppressed town, a strong anti-authoritative message, lasers, sex, action, communists and a metal clad unicorn! Knights of Cydonia is a welcome departure from Muse’s under-average usual music videos.

Is simplicity the key?: Coldplay - Yellow

While there are many over the top and crazy videos out there today in music video land, Coldplay's video for the song Yellow is not one of them. Some would argue this is a good thing as it lets viewers focus on the music accompanying the video. I would even be inclined to agree with them, if this video wasn't so damn boring.

Now don't get me wrong, I like Coldplay as much as the next guy, more even, but I get quickly tired of watching some dude walking along a beach for five minutes. I mean come on... its not even a nice beach.

In defence of the band they probably didn't have much money to spend on a video considering this was one of their first singles, but nevertheless, I'm sure they could have tried something.

Anyway, thanks for reading my rant concerning Yellow, and welcome to the blog!
Mitch

Film directors and music videos

What happens when a film director directs a music video?

Actually, many successful film directors started off directing music videos, e.g. Spike Jonze (director of Being John Malkovich and Where the Wild Things Are). But when an established film director has a go at directing a music video, you expect it to reflect their body of film work.

So when Tim Burton (director of films like Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow and Corpse Bride) directed the music video for ‘Bones’ by The Killers, you knew it was going to be a little dark and macabre.

Even though a lot of film directors do make music videos, I don’t think many of them leave their mark like Tim Burton.

Oh so indie...

Mumford and Sons - The cave

I don't want to say that I dislike it, but I'm not 100% for it. It is interesting, but it shows no relevance to the lyrics or even style of music. It simply seems to be an expression of how indie they are. It's an homage to their own alternativenessss which i think is actually okay. Anyway, give it a view and think about it. Check back and respond on the poll with what you think. 


Cheers,


Sam.  

How do you rate their music video?

The blog's name is pretty obvious, it's a Music Video Blog.  

•  Layout: we made the width of the blog 900 pixels so that the content frame could be 640 wide to fit videos from YouTube and still have the sidebar a decent width. 
• Colours:  We will use a greyscale colour scheme so that it is easy to read and so that the videos contrast the background and are easy to view. Black is sleek and has musical connotations. 
• Background: We will use a snowstorm as an homage to the 80's style MTV- when it actually showed music instead of "Jersey Shore" (cringe). And we think it looks 'musicy'. 
• Logo: The plan is to have a MVB logo up soon, stylised like a certain television channel (*cough *cough)
• Tags: each post will include some tags which relate to the post  and make it easier for you to follow the theme. We like sharing and don't mind if you leave us occasionally.
• Trending: Some posts will include multiple video reviews within the same style.
• Ratings: Sometimes we'll poll YOU to see what you think...are we right?

Here is a draft of what we want our blog to look like:

 Daniel, Sam, Theo and Mitch