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
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.
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
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.’
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