M83 - "America"
it came across much better than I imagine it would sound on paper - although when will people stop doing electronica videos which use fast-motion to show the "craziness of this modern world" (I remember thinking how unoriginal the Madonna "Ray of Light" video was, and that was years ago).
Yeah, they're all basically ripping off the film 'Koyaanisqatsi' that was released back in '83 (which is an interesting film IMO). Although i guess timelapse photography has been around for ages.
The video isn't much, with all the 3d cheese but musically it's great.
Guys, this doesn't resemble anything even remotely similar to the work of Godfrey Reggio. In fact I find the video entirely cheap and unmotivated. It seems to be the work of some college kids who understand neither the medium they're working in (boring amateurly overused minidv) nor the track the video showcases.
We begin with unnecessary dissolves overlapping a girl who wakes up and remembers(?) her time with a black man. How is this evoked? Not through the use of "3D cheese", but poor and uninteresting Eyeball composites.
We see her roaming around a boringly evoked NY. She starts to get panhandled until the track cuts and we segue into a rediculous, uninvolving, unengaging, and entirely SAFE 'sex scene' that I'm assuming is MEANT TO SEEM controversial due to its race content. Dumb.
Dear filmmakers/vid directors, if you cheapen a sex scene, the audience will feel cheap (please rewatch Jonas' SMACK MY BITCH UP. That's one way to approach sex in a vid. Relentless. Fearless)
The hand dissolves are ineffective and so are the following smooches they deliver as this middle section rises in tempo. Not only can I tell that these two people have ZERO sexual chemistry, but because of the failure of this middle pad, the concept of the vid fails as a whole. But more on that later.
Next we move into overlaying timelapse bar scenes populated with the horny collegiate. This is intercut with more 'memories' of time with the lover and various other, useless, ad entirely uneffective shots (Statue of liberty, hyperspeed subway ride, girl in parka yet again roaming, more bad eyeball composites that by now mean nothing).
The track is whipping away with speed and editorially we're still shitbag - neither in tune nor on rhythm. By now the piece works so intensely against itself that you wonder why you're still watching.
Now just to backtrack, I'm assuming the concept of the video is something like, "She looks into his eyes, he into hers, and we replay the events of their time together until she feels like the relationship is over and leaves". Not only did I have dig to come up with that proposed concept, but it entirely doesn't work.
Because it's staged in an all too well known metropolis (that, might I add, is never evoked in any way interesting - think Aronofsky's PI), set in the cliche sinkhole of college interacial love, executed like a high school student filmmaker, and attempts to build meaning in a relationship that isn't believable from the very start - WE HAVE OURSELVES NOT ONLY A BOREFEST OF A WATCH, BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, A CONCEPTUAL FAILURE OF A PROMO.
Our big climactic shot is a poorly framed girl in mirror type of gig, until we see our final shot, Black man on the bed, sad.
Dumb.
Whaouh you worked on that more than she did!
