Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood

Zombies, monkeys, and kung-fu.

...
Uh, fine.

From the first handful of bars evoking 'The Good, The Bad & The Ugly's theme (from which the song's title is derived) in combination with the subtitle lifted from the original (read 'good') Dawn of the Dead's dialogue, the video is playing with the viewer's sensibilities as an intrepid pop-culturenaut.

The bold, clean style of the visuals, pitched roughly halfway between the punk chic of Hewlett's Tank Girl and the hyperactive brightness of a Tartakovsky Saturday-morning cartoon brings a unique style to the table: a world, and consequentially a music video, where anything is possible. As newly created cartoons however, the Gorillaz are to begin with in statis: the white room so often represented by television and film as Limbo. This all changes, of course, when drummer Russel's frazzled id decides to go for a shuffle.

The representation of Del tha Funkee Homosapien as a sputtering, poor-quality television transmission again nudges knowingly at one's cultural awareness, and his joyful awakening of the graveyard introduces another genre trope into the cultural mélange -- the realistic appearance of the cenotaphs giving the whole video a tinge of Gothic pedigree.

Other moments to draw attention to: the hilariously realised dancing zombie gorillas, slamming the kitschy Thriller shtick back into the cartoon world where it belongs; the kung-fu hijinks of the Martial Arts Prodigy in all her technophile otaku-drool-inducing glory; and the Genie-esque manner in which Del is sucked back into Russel's head, owing as much to Disney's Aladdin as Ghostbusters.

As I said, this is my favourite music video because it has zombies, monkeys and kung-fu. The team behind Gorillaz, like us, have grown up on music videos, trashy pop-culture and cartoons. They know what they like, they know what people like and they know what to do with it.

'Bedshaped' by Keane

Right, the song's not my favourite but the video is. Its use of stop-motion and animation is beatiful, and arguably implies that Keane put as much thought, effort and artistry into the creation of their music as an animator does with a plasticine model, an idea imperative to sustaining the image they attempt to put forward of themselves as independent artists - although, ironically, the fact that the band are only ever represented in the video through drawings of themselves suggests the idea that they are somewhat manufactured themselves.


Bedshaped is, according to the band, a song about feeling left behind by a former friend or lover and the hope that in the distant future they will be reunited. This sentiment is well conveyed by the lonely, tramp like plasticine figure who seems daunted by the grim, urban environment he inhabits and whose only friend seems to be a kindly cat. The tramp figure himself is visually grotesque, perhaps reflecting the idea of a person becoming literally 'bedshaped' through illness and age.

The stop-motion animation has an urban-gothic aesthetic to it (resemblant of Tim Burton's The Corpse Bride at times) and the band appear as graffiti-esque animations within the walls of the tramp's world along with the lyrics of the song. As the band sing to him from the buildings and walls, the tramp seems to find his only solace from the construct of the city itself, including his resourceful cat friend, as opposed to the people who occupy it.

The lyrics and the band finally break out of the walls in the 'white light' of the song and the tramp finds himself within a white room surrounded by 3D renderings of the lyrics (that he himself has been reading and writing) and the bandmembers who are now drawn in a rougher, more energetic style. The implication is that he has either died or that the city itself has saved him.


I think I enjoy the video because it's just very aesthetically pleasing and it complements the sentiment of the song well, if not its exact meaning. I believe however that the representation of the song here was much less important than the representation of Keane as artists rather than a pop act. Whether it succeeds or not is, of course, debateable.

Smashing Pumpkins - Ava Adore

Smashing Pumpkins - Ava Adore

This was the lead single from the Pumpkins' "techno" album. They fired their drummer, replaced him with a machine and announced to the critics that they were now an electro outfit. Just in case some people hadn't got the message, they then released this video, which features no instruments, no live performance and only a half-hearted attempt to lip-sync. Filmed in one continuous take, the video sees the nearly-unrecognisable band dance through a series of cliched music video settings peopled with extras who might be mannequins and mannequins that might be extras. The camera repeatedly swings round to show the track and crew, emphasising that the video is a technological illusion, while the band often miss cues or disappear and reappear from shots at random as the music carries on without them. While the one-shot conceit and the sets themselves are impressive and Romanek plays interesting in-camera tricks with time and space, what I really like about this video is that it is such a blatant, knowing exercise in rebranding.

Coldplay - The Scientist

I particularly like the way this video plays the protagonists narrative in reverse, allowing us to see the effects before we witness what actually caused them. The director is able to convey what we discover to be a very traumatic event in a slow, trance like manner communicating the initial disbelief that you may actually feel if you were in that situation. I feel this also reflects the sad and sombre nature of the song perfectly. The first time we watch the video and follow Chris Martin’s journey “back to the start” is extremely compelling, as the viewer is almost discovering what happened as Chris replays it. This gives the video a unique quality as when you have watched it through once and found out about the car accident, the video will never again offer you the same sort of suspense initially felt when you didn’t know what had happened.
Once again, this can be seen as a mediated piece of art in the sense that its video documentation has been manipulated after the live filming. However, the video (a basic level) has only been played backwards, with a few special effects added. So in a way it could still be interpreted as showing a live set of events but instead focusing on the how the smallest of movements appear backwards.

Radiohead - Street Spirit (Fade Out)

A Street Spirit (Fade Out) is reflected in that the spirit of a community, represented by caravans here, fades out continuously throughout the video. This is made possible by the use of black and white, which allows, through a brilliant manipulation of lighting and great editing, people to apparently disappear and reappear. The fading effect is also aided by the variations in the timing of shots. For example, early on figures move at different paces in front of the caravan; a constant pace set in the centre by Thom, and an exaggerated escape from the caravan behind, slowed to accentuate each point of the descent. Whilst this does not fade that character out, they are almost alienated from the action in the shot, and that the frames are still shots throughout, alienates the characters from the viewer all the more, reinforcing the fading theme of the video.
I particularly like the aesthetics of the video; some of the images such as the slow movement of feathers to suggest a weight to them followed by a rapid fall create interest in their peculiarity. Everything seems emphasised and studied, helped by the fact that the images are repeated and developed. An interest is then created in the narrative of the images and the video as a whole, as well as the narrative of the video against the song.
Radiohead are at times a quietly explosive band and this tension is not only heard through the lyrics, but also seen, an example here being Thom’s violence with the hammer in shattering the glass, but that the glass is then held and suspended. The video ends where it started but in reverse; that Thom eventually refuses to fade out and rises instead of falls, creates another level of tension and reflects the contradictions, confusion and the overall style of the band.

"D.A.N.C.E" by 'Justice'

Some of you may remember 'Justice' from the collaboration they did with 'Simian' (now 'Simian Mobile Disco,' or at least some of the original group are) in Summer '06 with "We Are Your Friends." Here's a track, and its accompanying video, from their recently-released debut album:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo_QVq2lGMs

What I love about this video is paradoxically both its simplicity and its visual complexity (in regard to the animation). Whilst the art is monochromatic and fairly basic in style, the implementation of it into the video as part of a continuous animated piece is what really makes this baby feel fresh.

Not only does the animation provide the viewer with what is essentially a Disney-style sing-along option, but it also keeps pace, visually, with the track itself. It's a synchronization of numerous 'mediated' components:

• The original track, which itself has been electronically modified in the studio.
• The original footage, which has clearly been altered from its original colour to black and white in post-production.
• The animated effects, which were most likely drawn digitally, then applied to a computer model, generating the illusion of the animation being one with the performers' clothing (there are three obvious 'remediations', as it were, in this process alone).
  

Enjoy!

I would go into an conversation I had post-seminar yesterday morning regarding computer-generated animation and imagery, but I'll save that for a later post.

Faithless - Insomnia

This Video completely captures the mood of the song, there is a real sense of isolation. This is created not only through the empty streets, but also through the fact that the director has chosen to shoot the video in black and white. when the music becomes more frantic and the protagonists inner devil is seen in flashes, the colour used is even more poignant, adding to the intensity of the song. This video never ceases to send chills down my spine!!