SXSW 2012: Music Videos

SXSW 2012′s selected music videos featured a mix of techniques and ideas, from men who cry to disco ball-head ballerinas to doing a guitar (that last one is NSFW).

Check out all twenty-three SXSW 2012 selections and our write-up here.

Congrats to the Winner of Best Music Video at SXSW 2012: DANIELS for Battles “My Machines”.

Theodore Ushev: Kottarashky & the Rain Dogs “Demoni”

Theodore Ushev used a gramophone and fifty vinyl records painted with oil, acrylics, and gel paint markers to create this music video for Kottarashky & the Rain Dogs’ Demoni. He joins the ranks of contemporaries like Eric Dyer and David Wilson, experimenting with pre-cinema optical devices. The video features bright visuals reminiscent of Joan Miró that playfully dance and loop to the music.

Ushev was last featured on Motionographer for his 2006 Russian Constructivism-inspired Tower Bawher, from his XX Century Trilogy.

Work/Life: Sunshine

In last night’s Mad Men season premiere, Megan asked, “What’s wrong with you people? You’re all so cynical. You don’t smile, you smirk.” In the business of selling happiness, it’s easy to lose perspective.

Sunshine is a short documentary by commercial director Doug Nichol. It’s a portrait of John Benet, a veteran producer reflecting on his career and current place selling McDonald’s in Shanghai. There’s no motion graphics here, but there’s a lot to think about for those of us working in advertising.

“You go from job to job to job…years pass… I’ve been freelance for twenty-two years. There probably isn’t a month that’s gone by that I haven’t worried about the next job. I mean, we’re all just chasing our security, but then decades go by…”

“I’m doing two things… I enjoy the work, but I’m also doing something else. And sometimes I’m not completely aware of what that is.

Hat tip to Short of the Week.

Editors Note: The film is no longer on Vimeo as of 4/12/12. It is still embedded in a follow up article at AdAge.

SXSW 2012: Film Title Design Awards

Our SXSW 2012 coverage begins with the Film Title Design Awards, presented by iStockphoto.

The Film Title Design Awards program is unique among the SXSW screenings in that it opens with a panel discussion. This year the all-star jury was composed of Ian Albinson of Art of the Title, Ben Radatz of MK12 (Stranger Than Fiction), Gareth Smith & Jenny Lee of Smith & Lee Design (Up in the Air), and Kurt Volk of Troublemaker Studios (Machete).

The panel was followed by a screening of the twenty finalists. The styles ranged from epic powerhouse pieces like Elastic’s Game of Thrones and Blur’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to self-initiated projects like James Curran’s take on The Adventures of TinTin and Clemens Wirth’s Herbst.

For excerpts from the panel and viewings of all the finalists, check out our full coverage.

Congratulations to this year’s Winners:

Excellence in Title Design
Les Bleus de Ramville by Jay Bond, Oily Film Company Inc.

Special Jury Recognition
X-Men: First Class by Simon Clowes, Prologue Films

Audience Award Winner
Bunraku by Guilherme Marcondes, Hornet Inc.

Daniel Franke & Cedric Kiefer “unnamed soundsculpture” and Brian Oakes “Marie”

These two pieces use a Kinect and a dancer’s performance as the starting point for abstract imagery. Both are lovely, but the approaches evoke very different results.

unnamed soundsculpture by Daniel Franke & Cedric Kiefer
Franke and Kiefer’s dancer is the basis for a constantly evolving sand sculpture. My favorite parts are where big movements capture frozen echoes of the body and they hold in place for a split second before falling away.

More about the piece at the always excellent Creative Applications.

Marie by Brian Oakes
I love Oakes’s decision to add a bit of drop shadow to emphasize the collapsing of the dancer’s 3D movements to a 2D plane. My brain kept alternating between reading the imagery as ball bearings elegantly sweeping across a surface to seeing the actual dimensional form of the dancer.

Joseph Mann: Keaton Henson “Small Hands”

There are many lovely woodland creatures in Joseph Mann’s bittersweet music video for Keaton Henson’s Small Hands. At first you think they’re stop-motion, but they turn out to be puppets by Jonny Sabbagh.

Hat tip to Yves Geleyn.

Credits

Callum Cooper: Full Circle

Callum Cooper creates eerie, poetic short films using his own DIY custom camera rigs. I’d love to see an instructables or kickstarter campaign for tools like these.

Cooper’s work reminds me of Michael Langan and the lo-fi video experiments of Tell No One, a combo of art experiment, techniques, and new technology.

Andrew Thomas Huang: Solipsist

You loved the trailer. Now you can enjoy it online in full. Winner at Slamdance 2012 of the Special Jury Prize for Experimental Short, Solipsist by Andrew Thomas Huang. For more about the film and balancing personal projects with commercial work, listen to his interview over at Directors Notes.

Hat tip to Short of the Week and Yves Geleyn.

Carlo Vega: Yasiin Bey “N*****s In Poorest” (NSFW)

Carlo Vega‘s latest personal project is an unofficial music video for Yasiin Bey’s N*****s In Poorest. The song is Yassin Bey’s (formerly known as Mos Def) response to the decadent N*****s In Paris. Vega’s sparse visuals leave nothing to hide behind – there’s only killer design that focuses relentless energy on the song’s message.

A bit more from Carlo on the video’s genesis:

Things somehow lined up. I read about all these movements out there, all the unfairness.

I love rap, but when I listened to the new Kanye/Jay-Z, it was so vain it turned me off. So when I ran into this Yassin song, with the amazing Kanye beat, and lyrics that are layered and filled with a bigger message, I was like F*** this guy really has something to say.

I like music, but I NEVER listen to lyrics. I just jumped into making a video that only focused on the message. I guess if there is anything else I can say about it, it’s that I’m glad I had an opportunity to do a project that seems more meaningful than most.

Editor’s Note: Video contains NSFW type ;) Hat tip to Bran.