Brian Boydon music
AT A gig in Paris, Arcade Fire took a freight lift to transfer from their basement dressing rooms to the stage. They made a music video for Neon Bibleat the same time. The most lo-fi and cheap music video you'll ever see, it made a massive impression on REM's Michael Stipe: "Let's put the final nail in the coffin of the term 'music video' and allow it to be something of the past, because that's exactly what it is. But now music and film hasn't been in a more exciting place for 20 years. There's a beauty and rawness there."
Stipe was referring to the work of Mathieu Saura (aka Vincent Moon) who is the music video maker behind La Blogotheque, a website where you can peruse his unique work.
It all started for the Parisian when he couldn't get a ticket for an Arcade Fire show in his home town. As the band entered the venue, Saura stood outside holding a sign that said "Please, we want to come to the show". He was spotted by bass player Richard Reed Perry, the two got talking and Saura told the band about his idiosyncratic approach to music video making.
Most record labels/band management teams would prefer to see their charges flown to some exotic location to do something strange and wonderful to promote their new single. Saura's idea was to do the exact opposite. He persuaded all nine members of Arcade Fire to squeeze into the lift at their Parisian venue and he shot them there and then.
The band were thrilled by Saura's technique (or lack of one) and soon other bands came calling. Within a few months, Saura had filmed videos for REM, The National, Jose Gonzales, The Kooks and Beirut. All the bands were captured in everyday situations (car parks, walking down a street etc) and you get the distinct impression that each video took, at most, 20 minutes to make.
At a time when hundreds of thousands of dollars are routinely spent on music videos to satisfy the marketing beast that is MTV and other such televisual outlets, what all the bands above liked was how they could film the videos, quite literally, when they were on their way from the hotel to that night's venue. There was no hair/make-up, no endless retakes, and no high-maintenance fashion models to placate.
Saura's videos quaint and humble, but you just know that as word spreads about his indie fashionabilty, everyone from Sugababes to Celine Dion will be hopping on the bandwagon in the deluded belief that they're ever-so- zeitgeist by working with him.
A few minutes of watching Saura's work and you get all nostalgic for those vulgarly excessive Russell Mulcahy videos made for Duran Duran in the 1980s, when he flew the gormless fools to Antigua, dressed them in silky suits and put them on a yacht. You can say what you like about Duran Duran, but their Riovideo is perhaps more emblematic of the 1980s than Thatcher or Gorbachev.
Music videos should not become the preserve of pious I've-no-budget-because-money-is-a-bad- thing cranks. We actually prefer big, extravagant, total-waste-of- money affairs. Director Mark Romanek was given $7 million back in 1995 to make the video for Janet and Michael Jackson's Screamvideo. Even though the song was bloody awful and Romanek had to contend with two of the biggest loo-las in the music industry, Screamis a stunning work of cinematography.
Besides, what would you rather see: a couple of Jackson freaks acting out a 2001: A Space Odysseytribute or REM slumming it down a back alley looking morose and pretending to be ever-so normal?
Stop this lo-fi madness now. Bring on the Caribbean yachts and yellow silk suits. www.blogotheque.net
