While it’s existed in some form since the 1960s, the increasing popularity of the music video following the advent of MTV in 1981 changed Hollywood forever. Major directors like John Landis and Martin Scorsese soon took big paychecks to direct Michael Jackson videos, while directors from Michael Bay to Michel Gondry all got their start in the medium. Some even blame MTV for shortening audience’s attention spans, the rapid fire-editing pioneered in music videos swiftly becoming the Hollywood standard.
Thanks to the proliferation of YouTube and its like, the form continues to produce exciting work, and attract big name directors and even actors; for instance, the past few months have seen an enormous amount of attention for the likes of Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” video, or the ultraviolent, Romaine Gavras-helmed clip for M.I.A’s ‘Born Free’. The form also continues to be such a hotbed of new talent, and Videodrome is a new regular feature at The Playlist, looking at work from the potential Gondrys of the future, as well as videos from more established talents, or featuring big-name actors.
After the jump, we’ve got videos directed by the likes of Spike Jonze, Eric Wareheim and Nima Nouzarideh, starring Elijah Wood, Mackenzie Crook and the cast of “Kick-Ass,” and by bands like Hot Chip, HEALTH and Jamaica.
With an audience being found online, there’s no longer any need for videos to be aimed directly at daytime airplay as evidenced by two other recent videos are at least as extreme as ‘Born Free.’ Eric Wareheim, one half of the pair behind “Tim and Eric, Awesome Show, Great Job!”, has directed a clip for the band HEALTH’s song ‘We Are Water’ (via Pitchfork) and it’s a bit of a shock to fans of that show – the day-glo color scheme and anti-comedy stylings are replaced by a blood-filled, vaguely Raimi-esque horror story. There’s not a whole lot to it, to be honest, and it’s much less interesting than the Devendra Banhart video “Foolin,” (via TwentyFourBit) which combines the folkster’s latest lazy summer groove with a homoerotic, S&M fueled romp. It’s from director Isaiah Seret, who’s worked with Banhart a number of times before, as well as working on a feature length narrative based on the band Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zero’s album Up From Below.
Another one that’s more than a little disquieting is Tame Impala’s “Solitude Is Bliss” (via Pitchfork) from French team Megaforce, who were behind one of the best clips of last year, Metronomy’s “A Thing For You” (also below). While not as obviously shocking as the previous clips, it features more than its fair share of dog-punching and corpse-kicking. We don’t have a clue what’s going on, but it’s excellently shot.
More high-profile is the video to the new single by The Soft Pack, ‘Answer To Yourself.’ The garage rock revivalists’ self-titled album is one of the best debuts of 2010, and the video to the latest cut has garnered plenty of attention by featuring “Kick-Ass” stars Chloe Moretz, Clark Duke and Christopher Mintz-Plasse. Directed by Mean Magazine founder Kashy Khaledi, it follows a Bugsy Malone style food-fight in a school cafeteria after Moretz unleashes some of her Hit Girl skills to attack a group of school bullies. It’s a neat little clip, even if it’s tainted by some dodgy CGI near the end. Between this and the recent Cinemash videos, also supervised by the director, we’d be surprised if Khaledi didn’t move into features before too long.
Two other movie stars appear in other videos that have appeared in the last few weeks. Elijah Wood signed veteran indie rockers The Apples in Stereo to his label Simian Records. He directed a video for the band’s last album, and is now appearing in a series of short films to support their latest record, Travellers in Space and Time. The first of them, for the track, ‘Dance Floor,’ appeared recently, and it features the actor as “Elijah Wood, Chair of the Physical Science and Physical Education Department of Drain Creek Middle School.” Directed by Greg Gilpatrick, the feel’s somewhere between Michel Gondry and the cult BBC comedy show “Look Around You.” Across the pond, “Pirates of the Caribbean” star Mackenzie Crook also stars in a clip for the lovely British indie band Slow Club, ‘Giving Up On Love,’ as directed by Lucy Needs (via NME). Both can be seen below.
One of the videos that’s caused the biggest stir in the last month or so is that for the latest Hot Chip single, “I Feel Better.” While the album from which it’s taken, One Life Stand, was something of a disappointment, this is the best track from it, and, for a song featuring both a string section and steel drums, it’s given an appropriately weird video. Riffing on terrible British boy band JLS, it’s directed by British comedy star Peter Serafinowicz, who appeared in “Couples Retreat” and is set to play Paul McCartney in Robert Zemeckis’ “Yellow Submarine.” It’s very, very strange, and very, very funny.
A number of previous Hot Chip videos were directed by another U.K-based helmer, Nima Nouzarideh, who’s made headlines recently as the director of the secretive Todd Philips produced comedy ‘Project X,’ which is undergoing casting at the moment. Nouziradeh started as a member of the collective The Imaginary Tennis Club before working on some of the most striking videos of the last few years. We’ve already showcased his award-winning work on Santigold’s ‘L.E.S. Artistes,’ but we’ll repeat it here, along with Bat For Lashes’ ‘Pearl’s Dream.’ Whatever “Project X” turns out to be, we’re pretty certain it’ll be visually amazing.
Another British helmer we’ve got our eye on is Dougal Wilson, who studied astrophysics at college, before going into advertising, and eventually music video direction, helming consistently brilliant promos for the likes of LCD Soundsystem and Coldplay. His videos for Jarvis Cocker’s “Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time” and Bat For Lashes “What’s A Girl To Do?” are flat-out hall of famers, for example.
His two latest clips more than match his earlier work. Firstly is his spooky video for Massive Attack’s “Psyche,” (Pitchfork, via Vulture) which features a young girl in a “Don’t Look Now”-style red coat, and her encounter with a ghost. It’s rather charming, strangely reminiscent of Lynne Ramsay and Hayao Miyazaki, and beautifully shot, but it’s surpassed by his work on “Love Lost,” by The Temper Trap. Following a group of British schoolkids on a cross-country run in the rain with their sadistic gym teacher, it turns a miserable, familiar fixture of school afternoons (one this writer knew all too well…) into something almost unspeakably joyous, even if the song’s a little bland. One day soon, someone very smart is going to sign Wilson up for a feature, and we look forward to that day. (Thanks to friend-of-The-Playlist Ellie Grace for pointing this one out to us)
One of our favorites of the year so far is from Jamaica, a young French guitar band. Formerly known as Poney Poney and already labeled the next Phoenix, their single ‘I Think I Like U 2’ features production from Xavier de Rosnay, one half of Justice. The video is directed by Ed Banger art director So Me (who won an MTV Europe award for Justice’s “We Are Your Friends”) and newcomer Thomas Jumin, and it’s a sort of fake VH1 Behind the Music documentary following the history of the band, combining found footage, animation and doctored clips. We can’t quite remember seeing anything like it.
Finally, two others you may have seen elsewhere, but we’d be remiss in not mentioning them again. Firstly, LCD Soundsystem’s “Drunk Girls,” as directed by Spike Jonze and the band’s frontman James Murphy. We’ve already written about it once, but it’s still an absolute highlight of the form this year (as is the song which will round out our top 10 singles of the year, no doubt). Rather more lo-fi is an unofficial clip for Darwin Deez’s “Radar Detector” (via No Action), as made by a class of 4th grade school kids from PS.217. Like the work of choir PS.22, it melted our icy, cynical hearts, even if for just a second. If you see any videos that you feel are worth highlighting in the next Videodrome, you can hit us up below, or via the usual channels.