this is my first blog-post, in a way its an interwebs version of “hello, nice to meet you, this is who i am, if your kinda like this, maybe we’ll become friends, share beers and watch donnie darko together.” i don’t want to waste time talking about myself, because if your reading you probably already know the basics: i’m an up-and-coming director, i live in seattle, i work primarily on music videos or music-related projects, i beleive in acheiving more with less, i love my 7d, i hate capitalizing words/names, i live, i love, i drink, i eat, etc, etc, etc.
i get it, you get it; we’re probably pretty similar to a handful of degrees.
since this will mainly be an educational/industry type blog, and the 2nd best way to learn is to view, how about i just show you some of what i dig the most? here they are: my jams, my favs, a few of my favorite things.
every video in the past 2 years directed by andreas nilsson:
this swedish director a straight up bad-ass. i’ve been following him for the last year and half or so, and its been a pleasure watching his style develop from ultra-abstract to that-special-kind-of-quirky that is both accessible and smart. not to mention his images are beautiful and brilliant. his credits include mgmt, yeasayer, miike snow, peter, bjorn and john, and white lies. in order of most accessible to what-the-fuck-awesome:
*Guilty Pleasure* justin timberlake videos:
alright, i tried to resist pop videos and music for as long as i could, looking back on that it was fucking dumb to ever try. the term “undeniable” wasn’t forged without merit, and JT is an undeniably pure badass. if nothing else there is something to be said about being able to crash classic sports cars and co-star with scarlett johansson in a music video. both of these vids are brilliant and beautiful.
El Guincho - Bombay:
here is a new abstract video i’m obsessed with, love the abandonment of the “cool” 16:9 & 2:35:1 aspect ratios that have become the norm these days. this shit looks like VIDEO, and its proud of it. also the amount of individual scenes they had to shoot for this is staggering.
The Dead Weathers - Treat Me Like Your Mother:
pure, instant, simple, classic. its one of those ideas you wish you would have thought of before they did.
Liars - Plaster Casts of Everything:
i get it, foreward projection is awesome and its always been around. but after drake’s video for “over” came out this year it feels like i can’t turn a corner without seeing a music video that uses foreward projection. well here is a video that did it a few years ago, actually did a legit job of executing it (not to knock on drakes awesome vid), and made it interesting instead of just a cheap trick to make your video look more expensive then it actually was.
they don’t allow embedding on this video, lame, but watch it anyway because its way fuckin rad
Ok Go - This Too Shall Pass:
every list of great music videos has to have an ok go video in it, and while the 2nd video released for this song with the super complex rube goldberg machine is way cool, there is something about the simple charm of this video that makes me like it more. extra points for using an alternate recording of the song that matched the video.
there it is, this list is by no means complete, but its a small handful of my favorite vids i wanted to showcase today. every video on this list could be a case-study about making a great effective video, none of them are better than one another, they are all just different. the budgets here range from a few grand to the millions, it goes to show just how far you can take things with whatever resources you’re given.
