Post 21: Music Video Director Documentary

Independent study into an existing music video director


We think, as a group, it is incredibly important to fully research our music video ideas to know exactly what our aims are, what we expect our final outcome will look like, what we don't want to happen and who we look to, to inspire and encourage us in any way possible, including if we don't like them (then we know we don't want to do that). So, we have each researched different directors to see existing successful filmmakers that are already industry making music videos to see what could potentially happen. I chose filmmaker, David Wilson and made a short documentary about him. Below is also the script that I wrote about him that is read over the video, together with the screen-videos of his work. 

SCRIPT:

David Wilson is a London Based director, well known for his music videos and his work with commercials, short films and installations. David has created work for artists such as the Arctic Monkeys, David Guetta, Lady Gaga, Royal Blood and Tame Impala, receiving copious accolades including being crowned Best Director at the UK Music Video Awards and a Grammy nomination in 2015 for his video for Arcade Fire, 'We Exist’.

David studied illustration at the university of Brighton rather than film because he never thought becoming a film director was possible. So, instead, he began to draw. And then, he made them move. He made music videos in his bedroom, without the pressure that they were for anyone or anything. It was before the days of YouTube and films weren’t readily available online and so filmmaking wasn’t accessible. It also wasn’t as easy to get hold of a good camera that could create good quality footage and films, like you can now.

Halfway through his course at Brighton, YouTube started, so he put his animations online and soon he started to get some recognition and suddenly, filmmaking became a reality.

One of his first projects was a music video for Moray McLaren’s song ‘We Got Time’ using physical effects involving spinning disks. The video took a lot of logistics from a small crew organising the reflective mirrored animation and lighting.

The next project was a digital animation music video for the Japanese Popstars, focusing on a roller-coaster of small drawings. The band really liked what he had done with animations that threw other objects up and so this became the centre and concept of the project. After challenging himself to coming up with new drawings every 15 seconds for a couple of hours he handed them over the artist Keaton Henson, who reinterpreted the sketches into more established work. Then they worked with the animation team to create the lip-syncing. Over a 20 day turn around, the music video was a success.

Shortly after, David booked a music video for Metronomy, called ‘the bay’, his biggest so far. It was a proper two-day shoot on a low-budget, but through a lot of love for the band, a commitment from the crew, the album doing well in the charts, and by asking favours, made the music video into looking like it costed more than it did.

A key thing, noticeable in his videos are the seemingly easy transition in and out of digital effects and real effects. You can see a motivation behind keeping the old style real and physical special effects for the videos, his reason he says being ‘when you look back ten years, you can see how technology has developed and digital effects will have changed so much that they don’t look real or convincing, whereas with physical effects, they will always look genuine.’

A pioneering film for digital effects and an inspiration for David Wilson was James Cameron’s Terminator 2. And has clearly integrated both forms of special effects and physical puppetry, ending up looking incredibly authentic. Wilson feels like as a creator, you can’t solely rely on one thing or the other, you need to be merging them together to essentially, trick 






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