Making a music video surely must be the best gig for any film maker- it's short, there are no narrative constraints and yet you still have the structure and inspiration of the song you are working with. Let's not even mention mass appeal and exposure. It does seem to beg the question though as to why so many music video artists don't seem to run with this, instead leaving us with formulaic, forgettable cine-ditties that take a back seat to the song and function like a Fisher-Price mobile - something moving to fill our visual field when listening to the song.
Hello Chris Cunningham. Rather than being known for a particular style or genre, this Brit hits music video nirvana by completely inhabiting the space of the song he is working with. The effect is powerful to the point that you can no longer recollect the song without a rapid synaptic short-circuit that immediately brings to mind the video. Bjork's song "All is Full of Love" for example graduates from trip-hop zen to sublime masterpiece by the milky movements of Cunningham's unusual robot make-out session video (see below). Windowlicker has a pacing and humor that exactly matches and opens up Aphex Twin's coolly discombobulated electronica. To date there has not been an underwater video that fuels up on beats like Portishead's Only You. When looking at his ouvre, it's exceedingly hard to summarize his aesthetic, technique or style, and yet this lack of the artist's ego-watermark makes his rise as one of the best director-auteurs of this era both ironic and deserved.
Chris Cunningham: simply real damn good.
portishead? trip hop? next you'll be telling me you listen to massive attack. As soon as you think you know someone. . . .
ReplyDeletewhats next, rasputina? or something more acceptably mainstream and dated, like mars volta?
there's nothing like a bowl of cap'n snark in the morning.
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