The 2015 Reading and Leeds Festivals kick off tomorrow. This means that Britain's railways will soon be clogged with eager young campers who have spent the past few days practising their tents and wondering whether or not Gaz will manage to smuggle in that bottle of Smirnoff he's been saving all summer. While they brace themselves for the weekend ahead, I'd like to take a moment to tell you all the story of my first visit to the Reading Festival...
My first Reading festival was an ordeal before I'd even boarded the train. Under the impression that the Carling Weekend was a mandatory rite of passage for newly-minted sixteen-year-olds, I had booked my ticket within seconds of the box office opening, all the while assuming that my friends were simultaneously sat at their computers, F5-ing the Ticketmaster website, doing the exact same thing as me.
In all honesty, at the inception of this article I wanted to pick out the best crop of new music video directors to keep an eye out for. However, after researching further into it, I didn’t come up with much. There are two main reasons for this:
There isn’t much money in music videos any more. Equipment and editing have improved rapidly to the point where anyone can create a crisp, clean image on their desktop. Gone are the days of several million dollar music videos. Even music channels are starting to replace music videos with original programming (or, in some cases, re-runs of kitsch sitcoms) in order to draw in audiences.
Music videos are no longer seen as a viable platform to showcase talent. The '80s were experimental. The '90s understood the importance of cult material with alternative consumers, which allowed directors to show off their film knowledge. The '00s had Web 2.0. There is now an industry encouragement to create and publish your own material on the internet because it is much more accessible.
So rather than relaying music video history, which has been covered several million times before, I thought I’d just have fun with it and remind you of (or introduce you to) some awesome music videos.
One More Time by Daft Punk
(2003, directed by Kazuhisa Takenouchi)
This is less so for the music video alone, more for the film it’s attached to called Interstella 5555, about an alien band being kidnapped and brainwashed by an evil manager to perform on earth, told through the songs of Daft Punk’s album Discovery. Daft Punk had grown up as fans of Captain Harlock, a fictional badass space pirate created by Leiji Matsumoto, and whilst recording Discovery they developed a plot for a film they wanted to make in a similar style. Upon completion of their album they approached Matsumoto, who agreed to make the film acting as visual supervisor and bringing on Takenouchi of Dragonball fame to direct. It’s a really fun film that is a product of talented artists collaborating with a childhood hero. It’s just adorable.
