budget, June 1, 2009 5:44:12 PM CEST
Kanye West feat. GLC & Consequence - Spaceship (dir. Kanye West w/ help from Chris Milk who stopped by the set one day to chill and impart valuable lessons on the art of music video directing.)


Snippet from unreleased video off Kanye's first album.
         
why the hell was this never released??!?!
         
and does anyone have the full vid?
         
Liking it, can see why it might not been released; too many strange high-concept flourishes for Roc-a-fella's taste and an inert-looking performance from GLC. Slick cinematography though. Would love to see what Milk did with Kanye's verse which in retrospect seems pretty over the top. Was that an Axe product-placement?
         
Nice one! Belonging to the near extinct species of: 'rap video with a concept'.
         
i can see why this was never released - it's product placement heavy, and the cinematography is unattractively plain. bad grading job as well.

but i dig the concept quite a lot.
         
It drags, even for being just a snippet. I know they probably wanted to sell the monotony of working in retail, but everyone gives a sleepy performance and it amounts to a frustrating watch. The Roc has actually had a long history of really great videos, I think they probably just didn't want to kill kanye's momentum with something so slow.
         
Wasn't me. This was around the time period i was helping him with his directing. So i was on set for a bit one day, which is probably where the confusion stems from. This video though is all Kanye's. The credit belongs to him. dir. Kanye West.
         
screengrabs, article, & apparently GLC plans to leak the whole thing?

"The year was 2004 & we were just some young dreamers! This is some exclusive footage from the lost Spaceship Video! There’s more to come! Stay tuned"
         
It makes sense GLC would want to leak this. He's not entirely on the hiphop radar and this'll help his exposure for sure.
         
Full version is out through the same link up here.
         
Interesting idea and nice to see people trying something different. At the same time, the pedestrian setting and slow, slooow pacing might have been the opposite of what the label was looking for. This video probably fits the artist's idea of the song very well, but I bet the label wanted something that might push this slower track in a more exciting visual direction. I posted on that issue a ways back - 30frames.blogspot.com.

This is what I wrote about the recent Bat for Lashes clip and I think it applies here as well:

"The list of SUCCESSFUL videos where the artist appears detached (or blase' or tired or disinterested) is quite short. Making a clip with that as the core of the performance is always going to be a very high degree of difficulty. "
         
out of curiosity, 30f, what are examples of successful videos using that approach?
         
adam -

I couldn't think of any but was sure that if I had written that I would think of one immediately after. Or a Latvian teen would list ten and scoff at my stupidity.

         
what about glazer's blur video?
         
I think glazer's blur video is a good example of how a "blah" performance brings down a video.
         
a lot like blur, is romanek's video for weezer too
         
its too bad this didn't work out there are clearly problems....i wish spike jonze made this. dang.