This is very much under construction like the rest of the site of course... It's mostly just a placeholder to get the ball rolling and give me some momentum and content to work with as I decide how to ultimately structure this. Anyways, music videos are great, here are some of my favorites that always live in my brain.
This video is so original and technically impressive. I should write more but it really transcends all that.
WikipediaBoy in Static - Toy Baby Grand from Philip Stockton on Vimeo.
Directed by Alexander Chen & Philip Stockton. Made with TextEdit and GIF clip art. When I first saw this music video over a decade ago I was living in the time when Mac OS's Text Edit was very much in use. This video really blew me away. I'm a sucker for when people use things outside of their original intention.
Directed by Jennifer Juniper Stratford. A lot of great music videos revolve around simple ideas. This video only features Kevin Barnes against a white background and the sparsest of set elements. Everything comes down to playing with spatial and temporal manipulations, both digital and physical.
Villagers - Cecelia & Her Selfhood from adi on Vimeo.
Directed by Adrien Merigeau. Stop motion sequences by Eimhin McNamara.
Directed by Cameron Lew. A music video dripping in aEsThEtIc where the director/band lead plays every musician on stage. It's a good as it sounds.
Directed by ??? (I'll have to look this up later). OK this one isn't a "music video", it's the ending titles for the anime Tatami Galaxy - but it is damn good. The show's opening is also pretty great and just as artistically interesting. This is a great anime by the way, and only one season long.
This might have been my music video awakening as a young adult outside of that Kingdom Hearts opening and ultra niche flash music videos.
Neil is a master of not just comedy but also the audiovisual. There are few people who's work I've so deeply and consistantly admired, Neil is one of them.
TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB | What you know from MGdM | Marc Gómez del Moral on Vimeo.
Directed by Lope Serrano. Absolutely fantastic art direction and correography, not to mention cinematograhpy and editing. The Nod to Norman McLaren is a delight too.
Gotye - Seven Hours With a Backseat Driver - official video from Gotye on Vimeo.
Directed by Ivan Dixon and Greg Sharp. The credits on this one read like a real animation who's who.
Jed’s Other Poem (Beautiful Ground) from Stewart Smith on Vimeo.
Directed by Stewart Smith. Seeing the code dump to the screen at the end always makes mea tear up. Check the vimeo page for a full description and Stewart's links.
Directed by Alden Volney (contains strobe effects and flashing imagery). Waves and distortions... sign me up!
Directed by Billy Pilgrim. I don't like too many lyric based music videos but this one manages to really build up an energy with its simple but refined imagery.
Directed by Alden Volney.
Arctic Monkeys - Do I Wanna Know? from David Wilson on Vimeo.
Directed by David Wilson.
Directed by ???. Holger doesn't need to get in the pool, dude's already plenty cool.
Directed by ???. They just got a bunch of randos on the street to review their song and wow, I love it.
Directed by ???. Charisma.com did their original music video (deleted from youtube??) for this song filming themselves with a selfie stick, then they remade the video shot for shot but with a couple of older guys dressed up as the band members.
Dan Deacon USA from dave hughes on Vimeo.
Wow you made it this far? Here's one final treat (for now). Directed by Dave Hughes. It's a sprawling experimental video collage set to the second half of Dan Deacon's album America. Both the songs and the visuals repeat and grow taking you on a journey of meditation on the splendor and horror of life in this country. Lots more info in the vimeo description and this Wikipedia article.