Hype makes me sad. It looks like a student video.

         

i had to do my own research to confirm that hype williams directed this travesty. he get's worse with each video it's absolutely unbelievable something must be going on in his life ie drugs it's inexplicable. it's like he knows absolutely nothing of what he is known for... this would be a bad student video... i don't understand.

the 'industry'... labels... companies like hsi must really have no idea what to do right now if this is evidence of anything

         

Could it be that this is just a really low budget shoot? Sure seems like it. Looks like it was shot quickly and with very little time for post. Was this even onlined and colored? Looks like three really simple performance setups and zero effort on the edit.

I think it's plausible to assume that a guy like Hype needs a hefty budget to make his vision come to life on camera. His best videos have always been about epic art direction and tons of styling/costume/performance decisions. It's difficult to make videos like that happen without $.

Same goes for a lot of guys from that era. Mark Romanek never would have been able to make his nine inch nails videos happen today. Jonathon Glazer's Jamiroquai video would have been half as interesting to watch without the cool art and styling choices that he couldn't afford today. Gondry could NEVER make another Army of Me or Walkie Talkie Man in 2010.

This video looks phoned it, I won't dispute that. But I also assume that it was made for less than 1/4th of the normal 90s Hype budget. Labels have to understand, no matter how genius the director is, they're limited by the (lack of) funds you give them to work with.

Why hire Frank Gehry to build your skyscraper if you can't afford to buy the most basic building materials?

         

because frank won't return your calls...

why take a video if you're gonna phone it in due to lack of funds? unless you're assuming he's still making his full fee and that there's no money left after taking that into account.

if that's the case, then he's a hustler & power to him. song's shit anyways.

         

Yeah, it's a mystery as to why Hype would do this. Maybe he owes a commissioner a favor or wanted to help Snoop.

But my point is that acting as if all things are equal between this and say, "The Rain", is retarded.

         

bullshit... there are so many no-budget videos out there that are better than this. Even for a basic pop/urban video you can get away by just having nice cinematography and choreography. this looks like garbage.

         

Behind the scenes

www.youtube.com

Everything about the video is so unflattering. In this day and age, budget is no excuse for a decent video. I assume that Hype thought this video wouldn't be seen outside of Australia, so no effort was needed.

I still admire Hype's work. He wrote the screenplay for Kanye's "Runaway" short, so his talent is still there. It just disappoints me when I see trite like this.

** He probaly shot it with the same camera as this video.

videos.antville.org

         

hype williams is all trite to me now. his gimmicks are over. good lensing, colorists, styling and makeup but at the end of the day no real vision ideas or filmmaking talent... he only knows 'tricks' and he's out of them. his work to me is a celebration of vapid materialist trash, lip gloss, money and people blowing smoke at 120fps...

and the best part is not a single thing i mentioned can be seen in the video above.

         

Alexa? I may be crazy but think that was the camera they used. The video Doesnt look like it at all to me but the BTS show a camera with a similar build. To big for a dslr and and neon blue buttons arn't apart of RED. Very curious what camera. Video still looks like ass.

         

The making of looks better than the video. Maybe they shot it with the Alexa and forgot to light the video. I'd agree with you all, a low budget is not an excuse for a poor video. Anyone will tell you that.

On that note, it comes a point where you stop to care. After you've made 2,000 videos and achieved it all, what else is left to do? it may ring hollow but Hype is still Hype, he just suffered the adaptation process that is equivalent of the financial meltdown: budgets fell, how do you still work with constraints?

So this is proof.

         

the bts makes me cringe... people actually getting paid to work on this shit...

         

Is 100k+ AUD considered low budget around here? He probably just pocketed half.

         

oh ok, yeah, there's no excuse for that.