Music Video
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Watch: DP Gregory Oke’s Hand-Scratched Animated Music Video for Will Epstein’s Golden
Cinematographer Gregory Oke, whose credits include Charlotte Wells’s astonishing debut Aftersun, recently made his first foray into music video. His clip for Will Epstein’s “Golden” is unexpected, a pulsing, sinuous work of animation in which he hand-scratched film negative as well as shot the singer and then treated the resulting footage in similarly analogue ways. Watch the video above, and read below statements from both Epstein and Oke. “When I met Greg, I could tell right away he was a kindred spirit even though all the points of our shared aesthetic sensibility weren’t immediately known to us. Naturally, I was […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 21, 2023 -
Watch: Plant Life, Adinah Dancyger’s Parquet Courts Music Video
An ambitious series of 11 music videos accompanied the new Parquet Courts album, Sympathy for Life, and as the band’s Sean Yeaton writes here in an email, the band has opened up the viewing possibilities behind the original live distribution: In the spirit of miracles, I thought I’d bring up a recent one in PC history, where we somehow incredibly (with the help of so many of our talented friends and colleagues) produced 11 new music videos–one for every song on Sympathy For Life. Until now the only way to see them was a live stream event that I successfully managed […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 22, 2021 -
Watch: Leah Shore’s Music Video for The Malpractice, Get Father on the Phone
Filmmaker Leah Shore — a 25 New Face who contributed an illustration to Joanne McNeil’s Speculations column last issue — has directed a music video for the band The Malpractice. With pink curtains, green shag wallpaper and cardboard broccoli, the video features Sarah Ellen Stephens, who stars in Shore’s recent short film, Puss, and film critic and programmer Aaron Hillis in a playfully menacing infantilism scenario that Shore shot entirely in her own apartment. Check it out above.
by Scott Macaulay on May 26, 2021 -
Watch: David Lynch’s Donovan Video, “I Am the Shaman”
David Lynch directs as well as plays on a new video from Scottish songwriter and performer Donovan. The director is credited with “unique Modal Guitar Textures and effects” on the track, which, in a statement posted to Facebook by Donovan, came together quickly: It was all impromptu. I visited the studio and David said … “Sit at the mics with your guitar Don.” David in same room behind control desk with my Linda. He had asked me to only bring in a song just emerging, not anywhere near finished. We would see what happens. It happened! I composed extempore … […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 10, 2021 -
Watch: Michel and Oliver Gondry’s Music Video for “Model Village,” by IDLES
Director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and brother Olivier, who previously worked together on music videos like the Chemical Brothers’s “Star Guitar,” have just released a new quarantine-made clip for the Bristol band IDLES. Using a blend of lo-fi animation (Michel’s cardboard cutouts shot by a suspended-overhead iPhone) and CGI (Olivier’s desktop wizardry), the clip, which suggests a Richard Scarry adaptation of Animal Farm, moves from a racist village to the moon. From an article on the video at WePresent: The song is really about the dangerous small-mindedness born out of villages which can sometimes act as […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 12, 2020 -
Music Video Watch: “I-95,” by Jamie Block, Directed by Onur Tukel
New York independent filmmaker Onur Tukel, whose work we have covered quite a bit at Filmmaker, has directed a music video of a song by the anti-folk singer Jamie Block. It’s a small-scale city symphony that speaks to our compulsion to distract ourselves when in the most public of spaces. Block’s new record comes out tomorrow, and, as a preview, the folks at sonaBLAST! Records have sent it along with this press statement: Jamie Block is a New York City based singer-songwriter who is known for his ramshackle, genre bending music. In the 1990’s, he busked, skylarked, and chain smoked […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jun 28, 2018 -
Watch: Aphex Twin’s New Music Video Directed by 12-Year-Old Ryan Wyer
It’s been over a decade since Richard James released a storied string of Aphex Twin music videos, including the fiendish hip-hop musical extravaganza Windowlicker (directed by Chris Cunningham and embedded below). But, today, a surprise new video dropped from James’ upcoming EP, Cheetah, and it revisits several classic Aphex Twin tropes — namely, kids and disconcerting James’ masks. In fact, the director is a kid — 12-year-old Ryan Wyer of Rush County, Dublin. Check out “CIRKLON3 [Колхозная mix]” above.
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 21, 2016 -
Olivia Wilde Directed This Music Video on an iPhone 6S Plus
When actress-turned-director Olivia Wilde signed on to direct No Love Like Yours, the latest video from Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, she knew she wanted to shoot the project on an iPhone for both financial and stylistic reasons. But her DP, Reed Morano (who directed Wilde in last year’s Meadowland), a self-described film snob, initially resisted, fearing the quality would be sub-par. But eventually, Morano came around to the idea of shooting on an iPhone 6S Plus along with a makeshift camera rig and the Filmic Pro app, the anamorphic adapter which was used to shoot Tangerine. In the resulting 6-minute video, lead singer Alex […]
by Paula Bernstein on Mar 10, 2016 -
Music Video: Beyonce, “Formation”
“I might be a black Bill Gates in the making….” There’s a lot going on in Formation, the new single and music video surprised-released by Beyonce this afternoon. Hurricane Katrina, Black Lives Matter, the antebellum-era American South. Oh, yeah, and Red Lobster in one perversely profane lyric. Plus, the last shot is a fantastic riff on what is a pretty familiar indie-film trope — the actress submerging her face in a bathtub. I’ve been searching around and can’t find a director credit but will add if I come across it. You can download the song for free here.
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 6, 2016 -
Music Video: Lana Del Rey, “High by the Beach,” Directed by Jake Nava
What was that Godard (or Griffith) line, “All you need to make a movie is a girl and…”? Lana Del Rey’s latest music video, “High by the Beach,” has just dropped, and it’s got a kind of Zabriskie Point-era Antonioni meets Andy Sidaris thing going on, with lovely handheld camerawork, a trendily minimal beachside house location (“no” production design is the new production design) and a blast of a finish.
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 13, 2015
