:-(

A Fistful of Promos

Music videos are generally at the cutting edge of technology, innovative technique and creative freedom. Hooray for that.
Here are some of my favourites.

Us - Regina Spektor
Dir. Adria Petty
Regina Spektor's first music video is intially notable for its use of stop-motion animation, with objects whizzing around and filling up an empty room. However, it's the overall editing that really takes over - lines of the song are compiled from frozen images of Spektor, suddenly spliced with her singing. In this way, Spektor herself is turned into a stop motion puppet, and the effect is to perfectly capture the spirited yet elegant tone of the song. Also worth noting is the cinematography; in a Sgt. Pepper-esque paper room of icons, the camera sways so close to Spektor that her eyes are in focus but her nose isn't. The framing is both playful and compelling; her face is always just out of shot, as if both she and the camera can't help but move to the song.

Sugar Water - Cibo Matto
Dir. Michel Gondry
No list would be complete without something from Michel 'Wait, what? Do that again.' Gondry. Okay, bear with me: the screen is split up into two halves, with each half following one of the band's two frontwomen in single takes. One half is playing in reverse, and vertically inverted, so one of the women getting up from bed parallels the other going to sleep. Then they meet halfway, and the focus is switched. Then you realise that the two shots are in fact the same shot. I have to admit, it took me a while to work out what was going on. Gondry's trademark visual trickery is at its strongest here, constantly flipping everything on its head while including the smallest of details. Colour, movement, people, mood and sound combined to create an unusual and slightly eerie tone.

War Photographer - Jason Forrest
Dir. Joel Trussell
There's a moment in School of Rock when Jack Black's character, after a guitar solo, says "Dude, is my face okay? I think you melted it off." That's what I would have said to Joel Trussell were he sitting next to me the first time I saw this. Combining Vikings, pirates, robots, marching bands, guitar battles, rum and a whole lot of stickittothemaniosis, this video rocks, and it rocks hard. Reminiscent of the bold, reference-heavy animation of Genndy Tartakovsky, it's edited with a perfect comic timing and just makes you go "yeah!", or something of that kidney. As it happens, when I first saw this I was sitting next to a big man who looked like he didn't want to be disturbed, particularly with the status of my face.

Imitation of Life - R.E.M.
Dir. Garth Jennings
Many music videos are praised for having been shot in a single take, that spans 3 or 4 minutes without a cut (see Sugar Water). Well, what about a music video shot in a single take that spans 20 seconds without a cut? That’s exactly how long this video took to film; one wide, elaborate shot of a pool party, which is then played backwards and forwards while focussing on the various guests’ relationships. Like much of R.E.M.’s work, it’s both celebratory and tragic – a party where a lot is going wrong, but you don’t realise until you look closer.

Da Funk - Daft Punk
Dir. Spike Jonze
In which a crutch-bearing, ghetto-blasting, man-sized dog wanders through the 'Big City', and comes a cropper of its fast-paced, unfriendly tone. Jonze makes the music entirely diegetic, even drowning it out with constant dialogue and raucous city ambience. We never learn why Charles' leg is in a cast, or why he is a talking dog for that matter, but what prevails is an authentic sense of urban isolation. The prosaic, naturalistic dialogue off-sets the obscure scenario, so that we're drawn into the characters just as much as the music. In fact, once it's over, you'll have the song in your head but probably won't remember hearing it at all.

This was fun. Tell me your favourites.

My Teenage Geek Out

A number of years ago, I made an active decision to ‘get into film’. I don’t remember when or where it happened, but at some point I must have definitely decided that that was going to be my ‘thing’. I had the basic induction – to extensively watch Tarantino, Burton and Scorsese, the fun auteurs. Following that was a dive into new Asian cinema – the new wave du jour, meaning that I could understand the most talked about cinema of my generation. This had a kind of ‘I-was-there’ quality to it, a sound investment in my future conversations.

Then came focusing on building my knowledge of ‘proper’ cinema: intellectual directors who were established as worthy of debate. The way I saw it, if I managed to experience ‘real’ directors first, it would give me a head start in other aspects of investigation. Of course, I found my favourites: Kurosawa, Keaton, Kubrick, Kar-Wai… somehow, filmmakers with names beginning with ‘K’ helped validate me as a film fan. This tactic definitely paid off; after tasting films from different places and periods, I quickly became used to judging each film not only as an individual but also in a cinematic context – understanding that each one was part of a whole. What it didn’t do, however, was expose me to much in the way of science fiction. It had no place in what many critics regarded the cinema worth watching.

Eventually I took an increasing interest in genre – the most rigid surviving classification of cinema, and an extension of the ‘individual as part of a whole’ viewpoint. It’s almost impossible for a film to entirely escape genre classification, and when it does it somehow doesn’t sit well with the critics, who generally label it as ‘confused’ or ‘inconsistent’. It’s a prejudice that is used by everyone; I still feel anxious approaching any ‘romantic psychological thriller with horror elements’. This year, Danny Boyle’s latest film, Sunshine, most definitely a sci-fi, was released. For some reason, I got very excited. Why? I’ve never really loved Danny Boyle, and I thought Alex Garland’s other screenplay, 28 Days Later, was a bit rubbish. Then I read an interview with Boyle, where he described what attracted him to the project: “What a great starting point: eight astronauts strapped to the back of this massive bomb, behind a shield, flying towards the sun.” Oh yeah.

The idea was just so cool. Not just any cool, but that special kind of light sabre, flying machines, bicycle-over-the-moon cool. In other words…sci-fi cool. And I loved it. Good lord. In my rush to understand the cinema elite, I had neglected my dormant love for all things shiny and bleepy. I couldn’t get enough. I went back to all the films I had seen and disregarded – Blade Runner, Total Recall, Alien, 2001, Children of Men, Brazil – with renewed interest. There was just something there, something about these films that could attract me like no other genre. It’s not just film, however – sci-fi has even extended into my literary tastes. I’ve indulged in sci-fi both soft (Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut) and hard (Arthur C. Clarke, Stanislaw Lem) and devoured them all. I’ve even been reading actual science. With actual facts.

I should have seen it coming, really. Many of my favourite TV shows – Spaced, Cowboy Bebop, Firefly, The Powerpuff Girls – owed more to sci-fi than anything. Somehow it seemed more acceptable in the television format, due to the medium’s reputation as more accommodating to geeky cults. Also, the episodic format allowed for extensive exploration of far-out ideas, which tend to dominate quality television anyway.

My hunger shows no signs of abating; if anything, it’s getting stronger. I think I’m getting closer to pinning down what attracts me to sci-fi so strongly. Particularly, I’m fascinated by depictions of the future, partly for the social and political implications and partly for the cool and/or retro-futuristic visual styling. The side effect of this has been a growing interest in urban spaces, technology and space. Of course, film is still my ‘thing’ so my brain can’t handle incredibly complex theories surrounding these things. But I’m trying. Whatever happens, there’s one thing I’ve learned from all of this - I’ve been a sci-fi fan my entire life, and never realised before this year.