Jim Longden directs a lovely one-shot video for French indie band Oracle Sisters - shortlisted at this year's UK Music Video Awards - in which actor Charlie Rowe gives a virtuoso performance. Performances, in fact.The jumping off point for Rowe's tour de force in the promo for Alouette is a meta moment when he gets a call from his agent to be told that the director has chosen someone else, who's 'more wild', to appear in their music video. In his fury and disappointment, he is driven to show exactly what the video director will be missing.So he proceeds to go into character as a an old, quickly changing to become a Mafioso gangster, and then changing again and again, switching clothes, using conveniently placed props to aid his portrayals - and also playing with cardboard cutouts of the band - whilst manically advancing across a West London park. The strength of the idea, and Rowe's performance is underlined by the execution in a single Steadicam shot and the setting. As the pace between the actor's character-switches, and the energy becomes increasingly manic, the camerawork gets more frantic, the comedic value increases. And it ends to great pay-off, as its revealed the young director is, well, very young indeed. Excellent work.
Rob Ulitski - 4 months ago