Director

Alex Smith

&quot;90% of budget went on hiring the sofa and armchair,&quot; says Alexander O. Smith (the director formerly known as Alex Smith), referring to&nbsp;his new Donny Benét video. He certainly came up with a novel way for not paying extras to play the party guests.This is a thoroughly entertaining video for a leading light in Australia&#39;s burgeoning indie-lounge-disco scene, where Smith used motion control in a rather more lo-fi way that they used to back in the Nineties. That&#39;s what makes it so fab - that, and the sofa and armchair, of course...

Australia

Amy Sartorel

FIN Design & Effects

Dot Dash/Remote Control

Donny Benét 'Konichiwa' by Alexander O. Smith

Donny-Benét-'Konichiwa'-by-Alexander-O.-Smith

Alex Smith&#39;s third video&nbsp;for Olivia Bartley, known as Olympia. Shot on an 80&#39;s Sony DXC-M3 using the 80&#39;s Fairlight CVI video synthesizer for special effects.

Revolver

Fin Design + Effects

EMI Australia

Olympia 'Self Talk' by Alex Smith

Olympia-'Self-Talk'-by-Alex-Smith

Alex Smith, director of some fine music videos in the Noughties - not least, but probably most famously, for Coldplay&#39;s Yellow &ndash; returns with this marvellous work for Melbourne-based singer-songwriter Olympia, brilliantly&nbsp;recreating the look of a Blondie video from 1979, then twisting the aesthetic with a&nbsp;visual device from a later era.&nbsp;This is Alex&#39;s second video for Olympia, and like the first it was shot on vintage tube-based Sony video cameras he&#39;s acquired since he moved to Australia. So with the video look being completely authentic - shot by Alex himself &ndash;&nbsp;the&nbsp;continuous&nbsp;repetition of her performance (including baton-twirling and guitar-playing)&nbsp;on the screen, created by old-fashioned, labour-intensive means, makes for&nbsp;a slightly disconcerting, weird and wonderful experience for the viewer. Like finding an old lost classic...&nbsp;&nbsp;ALEX SMITH:&quot;It was a real labour of love for me. Last year, I found an ad in Gumtree, a church was getting rid of it&rsquo;s analogue video gear that it used for community TV broadcasts. So I pretty much bought a small 1980&rsquo;s TV studio. I felt a bit like Weird Al Yankovich in UHF. I used them to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxN86thnAxo" target="_blank">make a video for Olympia last year</a>.&nbsp;&quot;Olivia (who is Olympia) asked me to work on another video this year, so Smoke Signals came about. She gave me complete freedom to do what I wanted. It was just weirdly lucky that she happened to be amazing at baton twirling. I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ve ever met anyone else who can do that, but I suppose you never know until you ask.&quot;It was all shot on a tube based Sony broadcast camera from the early Eighties. We put down about twenty-five meters of track, and our grip walked it repeatedly over two days. He must have walked over 17km.&nbsp;It&rsquo;s one of the most basic of special effects. I tried to make sure Olivia was brightly lit and not wearing too much black, and then keyed out the blacks so she could be super-imposed over the previous take. Fin Design post production over here kindly helped me put it together, which really sped up the process.&quot;I really enjoy the hands-on approach, being able to see the seams of how it&rsquo;s put together. I love the way tube&nbsp;cameras respond to light.&quot;

Robyn Winwood-Smith

Fin Post Production

Revolver Sydney

Leah Howard

Olympia 'Smoke Signals' by Alex Smith

Olympia-'Smoke-Signals'-by-Alex-Smith

Olivia Bartley approached me wanting to make a video using the original Super 8 holiday films shot by the Ballet Russe while they were in Australia, in 1936. I wanted to shoot it as a live performance with multiple analogue cameras salvaged from different places.

Alex Kember

Dan Lee

Olympia  'Honey' by Alex Smith

Olympia--'Honey'-by-Alex-Smith

Shot with 80&#39;s cameras rescued from a Church TV station.

Sam Chiplin

Donny Benet ft Kirin J. Callinan 'The Edge' by Alex Smith

Donny-Benet-Ft-Kirin-J.-Callinan-'The-Edge'-by-Alex-Smith

Alex Smith: &quot;We used a forty-five degree mirror to get the glowing glove and iris effect.&quot;

Fat Possum Records

Jack Ladder & The Dreamlanders 'Come On Back This Way' by Alex Smith

Jack-Ladder-&-The-Dreamlanders-'Come-On-Back-This-Way'-by-Alex-Smith

Starring Anna Friel and Michael Sheen, Alex Smith's smokey, nicely graded (by James Tillett) promo for the Manics single Just The End Of Love witnesses a frustrating chess game between the two actors with them ending up in a right ole steamy clincher.
The promo was exclusively unveiled on the GMTV website this morning (Thursday), the band release their Postcards From A Young Man album on September 20th. 

Watch: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watchv=hRacII5WXpk" target="_blank">Youtube</a>

Warp Films

Rachel Dargavel

Ross McLennan

Emma Rees

James Tillett

Daniel Millar

Prime Focus

Manic Street Preachers’ (It’s Not War) Just The End Of Love by Alex Smith

Manic-Street-Preachers’-(It’s-Not-War)-Just-The-End-Of-Love-by-Alex-Smith

For I Blame Coco's second single (from forthcoming album The Constant), Alex Smith picks the odd location of an empty swimming pool (how scarey are they) and delivers this memorable promo with a nice bit of slo-mo...

Watch: <a href="http://warp.net/promo-directors/alexsmith" target="_blank">here</a>

Alex Smith

Director

Videos featuring Alex Smith

2017 (1)

2016 (2)

2015 (2)

2014 (1)

2010 (2)

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