Gwen Stefani "4 In the Morning" dir. by Sophie Muller
Stefani and Muller hook up again...
OBTUSITY: Disagree my friend. This is neither meta muller nor watchable stefani. Rather flat throughout. All the posing to the lens/audience is no "break between fiction and reality" but instead mere posture. I find it almost impossible to keep watching after a minute. In fact, I find myself scrolling around your blog - ha.
i hear ya. maybe i'm giving muller too much credit on this one, but some of those takes just seem too long and deliberate to be entirely meaningless.
Ok I know I'm gonna get get bitched out for this, in fact I know obtusity is an uber-muller fan, but I just don't get it. Sophie keeps making the same visuals over and over again. And most of the time it's a fairly boring, not all the time but most of the time (song 2 is one of my favorite performance videos ever).
I held my tongue last week when you posted that Rufus Wainwright video, which is pretty decent on it's own terms but is exactly like everything else Muller has done. Every Sophie Muller video is a bunch of wide shots arbitrarily dollying in and out, with fairly flat lighting. It gets boring after a while. See: Rufus Wainwright, which is really no different from the Dixie Chicks or Gwen Steffani or Beyonce or Bjork. The only thing that really changes is the setting/symbolism.
This video isn't exactly like those, but it's still fairly bland. Muller has her concepts down, it's just her visual execution that annoys me. Things I'd like to see in Sophie Muller videos are:
- Fewer wide shots.
- Less random dollying
- Better lighting/grading
- Fewer zooms
- Less random dollying dammit!
Thing is when she breaks out of her shell it's usually pretty great, see: Blur, Blur and Coldplay
Also I don't think I buy the the meta video thing.
Muller disappoints once again.
I like Muller, but I have to agree that this one falls really flat. It feels like a photoshoot more than a video. Sure Gwen looks great but a video thats 90% close-ups with some wides thrown in for good measure just bores me (I have to disagree with OTC here, there are too many CUs more than too many WS). I know this video looks good on TV, but it was tediously boring to watch here. I kept thinking there was something that was gonna happen...but no.
: )
analog boy: point taken, ha.
The "random dollying" is one of the most effective Muller tendencies. I usually dig her videos/visuals, but this one is missing something.
I think I've changed my mind since obtusity now posts vid links with the essay links; the essay is like bonus material to the post. Actually my only nitpick right now is: Why not wait for the QT?
I haven't watched the vid yet. Waiting for high-quality. Muller rocks. :)
tut tut, analo, hatin' on obtusy - th' boy writes his little heart out o'er there! i'm with k on this: mere replication is lame, but antville as a fount of inspiration - why not?
dang, backsliding is so in style right now. so i guess SRO's smaller 'essays/interviews' don't count much towards 'bonus' material. keep up the club.
You got it - same goes for SRO as Obtusity, 's what I meant. My current stance, until things change, like, tomorrow or something.
not sure if this is a coding nightmare, but what if antville had a kind of ticker thing much like obtusity has for videostatic that showed latest content for certain sites, sro, obtusity, videology, 30f, as opposed to pushing other videos down the page when these sites submit their latest content?
unless i'm much mistaken, the 'ville's destined to stay the eminence grise o' the bunch, without all the new-fangled whistles & bells. the future is bright - but whether it's orange...
or it jus' mite be lite mate The vids ok!
