ifmv, 12. June 2007, 14:28
New M.I.A. Video "Boyz"


mov
if:mv: M.I.A. - "Boyz"
         
Did paper rad make this?
         
She is awesome.
         
Choice!!
         
prime!
         
great video! so different but also so cool!
         
I wonder how difficult the web compression was with all those colors. Nicely done.
         
Boss! When's her album coming out, anyway?
         
I dig this video and her music in general, but the graphics bleeding into the matting really bugs me. I wish everything was contained or the matting left off altogether.
         
disagree. matting needs a good questioning now and then, and here it's done totally in the flow/on the fly.
         
i agree with kee on this one... the way the graphics are used on top of the matting looks sloppy and unchoreographed. it's the "flow/on the fly" thing that makes it worse. you can't just put the matting there and scribble all over it. unlike hype williams' videos where he intentionally used the matting to create a specific style, this video makes it seem like they put the matting there for no reason.
         
"you can't just put the matting there and scribble all over it."
lol. do tell aunt mildred she needs to update her on-screen graphics primer.

it's is precisely the point it seems to want to make: so many videos use matting automatically... the energy of this just ignores them. works for me; ymmmv.

(would love to see obtusy do a piece just on graphics/framing...)
         
To me there's an unwelcome tension between M.I.A. and the graphics. To be studious about it: These type of graphics have traditionally been a rebellious/celebratory third-world culture thing, and are cool because you have no idea where it's coming from or who the designer is. It evokes that Hungry Like the Wolf-ish feeling of 'the mysterious third world.' Here, the graphics are saying, "There's someone making this happen," but then M.I.A's on screen too. And I don't buy her cultural appropriation*. Her website does a better job, but still: Her face is there, and that makes it feel a little more corporate/star-motivated, and a little less iconic.

See also Buffalo Stance, which is this vid's (and Galang's) most direct descendant, mv-wise.

*That said, the vid just needs some editing/graphic tweaking to get it to work better. Or M.I.A. needs to make some gesture towards the unseen graphics. Imo.
         
ymmmv: your mileage may motherfucking vary
         
Strange wen I first saw n listened to this I thought it woz quite an anarchistic noisy affair
But since Kev posted the Cherry clip I'm amazed on re listening how both tracks are rather paired back to a bare bone rydem

Its not how my so recent memory construed the MIA track I assume It woz heavily influenced by the graphics ov the clip

Nor did my minds eye recall the thinness the Buffalo trax And I'd always thought that earlier Cherry vehicle Rip Rig and Panic was rather musically unstructured with loads ov wild improvisation,

I seem to have been mistaken there too Jus' shows wot u think ain't always
         
Album out July 21. She's working with PHENOMENAL Switch.
         
This is brilliant.
         
Dir. Jay Will; articles from beeb and local news on mv production in Jamaica. yardflex has a cross-section of the island's production.
(in other news, obtusy got boinged.)
         
"Boyz" was directed by M.I.A. & Jason Williams, says Video Static. Not sure where Obtusity got the credit, but VS' credit looks pretty official.
         
"...Jason Williams who is known in the music video sector as Jay Will..."
         
"..and to his friends as Jill.."
         
boyz making of mov
         
Sick! I like the priest / transformers font combo.