Music videos are not always necessarily focused on the music’s performers, who sometimes use the video as an opportunity to provide a short cinematic experience in its own right. Its visual contents may be related to the lyrics, music, or atmosphere of the song, or it may present a theme that is important to the musicians, or it may even follow some totally unrelated idea. In either of these cases, the making of a music video sometimes involves the creation of new places altogether. From the point of view of The Virtual Space Theory, this results in a particular kind of virtual place: one that constitutes a self-standing invention. The following is a collection of a few prime examples, some of which might best be watched in full-screen mode.
The first example is the brand new music video for Massive Attack’s recent song Splitting the Atom. Even though this blog is not a news blog, it is still a pleasure to occasionally be able to also include fresh creations in the discussion. In this case, a highly stylized visual depiction of a city, presenting intense action in a frozen moment, in which nearly the only visual dynamics are the evolving view angles that we are provided in order to witness it:
Whereas the above example is wholly based on digital production techniques, the following example is a reminder that other techniques remain just as valid. The music video of Muse’s song Uprising creates a city with its own disaster scenario (as well as its own monsters), but this time using the technique of filming a physical scale-model:
In the next example, the music video of DB Boulevard’s Point of View creates a city using a highly imaginative play on production techniques. It is made purely with computer graphics, and yet it uses these tools to give the impression that it was filmed using a scale-model made of pieces of cardboard. Even more interesting is that the character of the city – although made to reflect contemporary urban environments –clearly also incorporates its actual cardboard nature:
Finally, the visual contents of the music video of Goldfrapp’s Twist may not be quite urban, yet it presents a fascinating journey through a whole range of inventive places at different scales, unfolding before our eyes on a continuous roller-coaster ride. Shall we go on another round?
