Prosthetics

Barney Burman

Dave Meyers and Chris Martin&nbsp;push the boundaries of VFX - and celebrate dance via the Ambiguous Dance Company and choreographer Boram Kim, in the blockbuster video for Coldplay's 80s-tastic Higher Power.This is state of the art green-screen technology happening here, completed with typical elan by a team at Mathematic in Paris. Unquestionably one of the biggest blockbusters of the year so far.&nbsp;&nbsp;

United Kingdom

Dave Meyers

Nathan Scherrer

freenjoy

Somesuch

Jamie Rabineau

Ben Piety

Dave Dean

Scott Cunningham

Pergrin Jung

Koji Kojima

Brian Lofthouse

Patrick Tatopoulos

Peter Andrus

Galen Hooks

Marta del Rio

Ryan Burke

Charlie Le Mindu

Beth Fenton

Sienree Du

Brittany Sullivan

Alyssa Oh

Coldplay 'Higher Power' by Dave Meyers

Coldplay - Higher Power (Official Video)

Dave Meyers directs an emotional and pertinent&nbsp;visual for Anderson Paak's Lockdown.Reflecting on racial injustice, police brutality and the global pandemic, the video is an introspective exploration of how society has reached its tipping point, and a call for systematic change.&nbsp;Featuring cameos from&nbsp;Dominic Fike,&nbsp;Andra Day, Jay Rock, Syd of the Internet and .Paak's son Soul Rasheed, amongst others,&nbsp;Lockdown is made up of several performance vignettes, stylised in a subtle way with offbeat angles and composition, but pared down from some of Meyers' more fantastical work. The intimate performances are the focus here, and the video ensures&nbsp;the issues at hand remain centre-stage.&nbsp;The animation at the end of the video, detailing the names of those killed through police brutality, is a striking wake up call: "The People Are Rising". All cast and crew salaries were donated to Beam, Dream Defenders and Color Of Change.&nbsp;&nbsp;

United States

Robin Day

Max Dean

Will Urie

Spencer Graves

Jasmine Benjamin

Stefan Sonnenfeld

Hip Hop

Contemporary R&B

Anderson .Paak 'Lockdown' by Dave Meyers

Anderson-Paak-'Lockdown'-by-Dave-Meyers

It&#39;s not quite Planet Of The Apes, and it&#39;s not quite Breaking Bad.&nbsp;But Dori Oskowitz&#39;s video for DJ Snake&#39;s makeover of AlunaGeorge&#39;s You Know You Like It is the tale of a guy with the looks to make it into the former, and the motivation that would pass muster in the latter.And he&#39;s a pretty mixed-up kid. Or chimp, even.&nbsp;You suspect it&#39;s&nbsp;not going to turn out well...

Dori Oskowitz

Prettybird

Kerstin Emhoff

Candice Ouaknine

Tracy Hauser

Jason Baum

Leah Younesi

Chad Nicholson

Terrisha Kearse

Rik Zang

Phil Salick

Hayley McCune

Leah Dempsey

Niles Howard

Rock Paper Scissors

Derek Hansen

Benjamin Helm

Dance, Pop

DJ Snake ft AlunaGeorge 'You Know You Like It' by Dori Oskowitz

DJ Snake & AlunaGeorge - You Know You Like It

Unless you haven&#39;t seen The Wire, who can forget Omar Little, the Lone Ranger of the ghetto?&nbsp;Michael K Williams created an unforgettable character with Omar, and&nbsp;having followed up with another&nbsp;well-respected role in Boardwalk Empire, it&#39;s no surprise that he&nbsp;delivers a compelling performance&nbsp;for Isaiah Seret&#39;s futuristic carnage bumper for MGMT&#39;s Cool Song No. 2.&nbsp;This is stylised narrative at its best, demonstrating that&nbsp;as well as Williams,&nbsp;Isaiah&nbsp;is a man at the top of his game.&nbsp;Underlit Porsches, PVC-wearing drug-cutters, and golden houses built in the desert &ndash; the video is a visual feast. And then there&#39;s the story, which develops in unpredictable ways - from gangster film to sci-fi shocker to love story.With narrative-led music promos it&#39;s sometimes easy to forget the song, band or original purpose of creating a visual. Not so here, as&nbsp;Isaiah has cast members perform key lines whilst going about their day-to-day business of creating a future drug our children should steer well clear of.&nbsp;Violence clashes occur in some of the most stylish yet&nbsp;unique garments our shops have never seen &ndash; as Isaiah explains on his <a href="http://www.isaiahseret.com/MGMT-COOL-SONG-No-2">website</a>. It&#39;s the little touches like this and many others&nbsp;that allow the stirring story of love, pain and regret to blossom.&nbsp;Should this be a full length feature-film?&nbsp;Possibly. Would we like to see more of Isaiah Seret? Most definitely. We caught up with Isaiah in a soul-searching interview where we discussed a pacifist&#39;s take on violence, what it took to complete a project of this scale on a budget and how and why they ended up shooting in the desert.I read you came up with the concept for this video having just finished a commercial shoot in South Africa, did the story evolve or stay very much as first thought?When we wrote the treatment, Mindy (my co-writer &amp; stylist) and I were sitting in the Port Elizabeth Airport, totally stuck, no flights out. So we would write, and then try and deal with our tickets, and write some more. By the end of the day, we had a treatment that is really close to what we see on screen. I would say most of the changes came during casting and scouting, which added a lot of depth to our characters and scenes.This was obviously a mammoth production, did the result match your expectations?Originally it was a bit more sci-fi, and we were planning on building a lot of sets, but the reality was we had so little money, sets weren&#39;t an option. At the same time, I discovered this artist, Robert Stone, who had built this place in Joshua Tree. Honestly I didn&#39;t even want to shoot in the desert, but seeing this home was like finding a missing cast member. But the artist had never let anyone shoot there, from Beyonce to Rihanna, since he didn&#39;t want his house branded as the &quot;Rihanna&quot;&nbsp;house. But I wrote him directly, told him my story, and somehow he loved it, and let us shoot there. So the location enriched our world, and also became the bones for the drug room and so on.&nbsp;Pain and suffering are reoccurring themes of yours often told through violence, why do you think these themes have struck such a chord in your creative imagination?I am really drawn towards understanding violence, both pre-meditated and impulsive acts. Maybe it&#39;s because I&#39;m a Buddhist, pacifist, but it fascinates me. I use it on screen as a way to bring characters to feelings of regret and loss. Basically, some form of heartache. Heartache is the best, in particular because it&#39;s one of the few emotions that triggers people to genuinely change their lives - to reevaluate everything - or take a full moral inventory. A person with a broken heart, or filled with regret, can fully transform who they are.But arriving at that place with our character is a little tricky. Usually you break a person&#39;s heart through the loss of a relationship or loved one, but I feel committing violence on another&#39;s behalf, or as a duty, also gets us there. In this film we do both - the soldier like violence, and the loss of a loved one.&nbsp;Actually the director Alejandro Jodorowsky once said, &quot;You can&#39;t have spirituality without violence.&quot;Michael Kenneth Williams is known for his intimidating roles in The Wire and more recently Boardwalk Empire, what did he bring as a critically acclaimed actor?Michael has perfected the quality of gangster vulnerability - which has clearly fascinated folks who enjoy his shows. And in this film, Mindy and I wrote a character that is the most sensitive gangster on the face of the earth. He is violent, but every action destroys him. Michael really loved this and really merged with that role. I mean, you can see it in his face when he is strangling the man at the gate. I&#39;ve never seen him go that far, actually.There is a running theme of The Wire characters in your videos. Having previously hired Chad Coleman, would you consider the show an influence &ndash; and is it going to continue?&nbsp;Saul Levitz, the video commissioner at Columbia Records, told me we are two for two on The Wire-casted music videos, so&nbsp;we are taking polls for who&#39;s next. He&#39;s voting for&nbsp;Bunk, and I&#39;m thinking&nbsp;Stringer Bell. But, in terms of strong TV influences, I think I&#39;m more a Deadwood man.&nbsp;So many aspects of the promo are captivating, how important was it to have such an experienced and talented team behind you?I mean we always want to work with great collaborators, like cooking with artisinal ingredients, but with this job in particular, I needed people willing to work incredibly hard for no money. Which is OK if we are all learning, but since every aspect of the video was technical, I really needed super-talented people involved&nbsp;or it would have been a huge mess. However, with the exception of Barney, who did the prosthetics and who I didn&#39;t know before, I only forced my close friends or people I have really built a good working relationship with to work on this.&nbsp; Most importantly these are folks who have good attitudes, but still go the extra mile to make something special. And in the end, when the workload was really crushing, I had to promise not to take another job like this for a long while.&nbsp;Lastly, in terms of talent, I knew that with all these great image-makers we would have something aesthetically strong. But at the core, Mindy and I didn&#39;t want to make a stylized &quot;music video&quot;, we wanted an emotional narrative. So we absolutely needed actors that wouldn&#39;t get overpowered by the visuals. Michael and Henry Hopper (who played the lover) were both that calibre of actor. I feel like no matter how crazy the world was that we threw at them, they reacted to it from within the character and made it their own. On film this means everything - it&#39;s the moment when it all becomes completely real.* Check out Luke Tierney&#39;s blog,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.wordischeap.wordpress.com">Word Is Cheap</a>, or his Twitter&nbsp;<a href="http://www.twitter.com/wordischeap">@wordischeap</a>, for more thoughts on his favourite music videos.&nbsp;

Barney Burman

Prosthetics

Videos featuring Barney Burman

2021 (1)

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