Videos of the Month - April 2020
Promonews - 4th May 2020
So we have managed to get through another month of this. But more than that, April 2020 was the month when music videos captured the spirit of the moment in the coronavirus crisis.
Quite early in April - just two or three weeks in - the first videos shot under lockdown began appearing. And during the course of the month, we have witnessed the rapid evolution of creativity, with an increasingly varied use of crowd-sourced material and also increasingly ambitious remotely-directed, self-shot material by artists.
As Erin Murray and Jeremy Schaulin-Rioux video for Thao & The Get Down Stay Down (above) thoroughly nailed the potential of Zoom at the start of quarantine, things have moved on, with other narrative uses of the video conferencing app, including Will Kindrick's video for Chaz Cardigan. Meanwhile Marcus Mumford managed to appear in two remotely-directed videos, for his own version of You'll Never Walk Alone by Nic Davies, and then guesting in Filip Nilsson's impressive global dance-along for Major Lazer. Even The Stones have got involved, with Joe Connor's kinetic essay on deserted cities.
This process will continue, of course, as music video production shows its instinct for resourcefulness and its core of creativity. But of course there was lots more released in April, in the good old days when filmmakers could gather and work together... including blockbusters for the likes of Dua Lipa, Octavian, Rita Ora and Run The Jewels, and standout work for Crunch, Scribz Riley and much more besides.
Videos
Promonews - 4th May 2020