Kill Switch Engage- Dir. Lex Halaby
Wow, not only has this type of animation been done like ten thousand times before but this totally steals from Terri Timely's video for Midlake ( especially around the 3min mark).
lazy and for such a crappy song...
Lex's name doesn't appear on this on-air, but sometimes they make mistakes with credits. ?
I thought this was a nice change for a genre of music that doesn't usually get good treatments. It reminds me of a lot of other vids too (here we go..): Counting Crows "Round Here," Cranberries "Free to Decide" v2, and Fleetwood Mac "Hold Me"..
i agree with kev, for a metal video I actually kinda like it. usually those videos are just people rocking out in a room or warehouse, so it's nice to see someone trying something different for a change. plus the narrative is pretty extensive and there is very little performance, which is rare too. i don't think either of those videos were the first to use a bookcase shot like that, so i doubt there's any relation.
where's an essay about the physical phenomenology of heavy metallers (and of hip-hoppers, for that matter)? that's what videos like this, where they stick out like sore thumbs in their obsessively repeated body tropes, make me think.
damn - hard to deny the ripoff. too soon to call it an hommage... not awful though despite the song. Lex needs to move away from heavy metal or whatever you call this - he's getting pigeonholed, and his best video in my opinion is his only non metal one: atmosphere "national disgrace".
Hey guys, thanks for the input on the video. The concept actually came about through conversations with the band and some C.S. Lewis inspiration more than anything else ('The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe'). I see the visual similarity between the videos in that section of the Midlake video, but overall the backbone storylines of the videos are very different. Of course everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I love Terri Timely, we grew up in the same town, Ian and Corey were actually at the same production company as me for quite some time and I have nothing but the utmost respect for their work.
As "poser" said, this type of page animation has been done before, but when I write concepts I work backwards from the narrative into the performance. In other words, after solidifying the narrative, I tried to find an interesting and unexpected way to showcase a band in this genre while intergrating them into the storyline. I make no claim that it has never been done before. But aren't you glad the band isnt "rocking out in the golden field?" haha. As you know, it's always an uphill battle to make videos in this genre interesting, but fortunately the band was very open to experimenting.
I ended up flying to Boston to shoot the band against a white background on video. First, I took the performance footage and edited it together. Afterwards we printed out every 3rd frame of the video footage and bound them into books. On set we shot at a low frame rate and flipped the pages to a metronome to try and keep synch as best we could. Overall I am very happy with the aesthetic we created, and feel it was far from a "lazy" approach as suggested. Myself, the band, and the label are all very happy with the way the video turned out; and thats the most important thing to me.
Dingleberry, you should check out my website again (the intentionally ghetto one, that is). In an effort to avoid being pigeonholed into a genre I don't listen to or identify with, I have shot a lot of pop/rock/indie videos this past year (Hoobastank, Cobra Starship, Cute Is What We Aim For, Armor For Sleep, Panic! At The Disco, The Frames). I'm glad you like the Atmosphere video I directed, it's one of my personal favs as well. I'll try and post it on this site soon for others to check out. Anyway, I've said my piece, thanks for listening. xo.
