War Cry VISUAL DECK

Approach

I like the idea of keeping the scope of this project really simple. I think there’s a lot that can be done in closeups, in a smaller studio space, where we have a lot of time and control. The song is very big. The best way to match that epic tone, is to take some very small things, and make them feel

VERY BIG

Simple sets - big ideas

Mad Max: Fury Road achieves a lot by limiting it’s color palette and simplifying its production design to the bare essentials.

Tragedy of Macbeth also created very simple backdrops and shapes to frame its characters and build the architecture around its story.

Fantasia, a favorite of mine for how it creates such a dynamic world through such simple execution of light, shadow, and color.

Lana Del Rey - Composition - Abstraction

I’d honestly never noticed how insufferably lo-fi her videos were until a took a closer look. I like a lot of the compositional ideas, and the simplicity of the visual language. Blue Jeans especially uses visual abstraction in a very interesting way, to break up the rhythm of the piece and create interest in what’s a relatively stark and simplistic videos.

Miley Cyrus - Moving lights - projections

A couple of her videos strike me as great inspiration for this project.

The use of lighting cues is a very effective technique that transform a very simple music video (one take, mostly just a medium-shot) into something absolutely captivating. This is something I used in a very restrained fashion in my music videos for Timothy Baechle, and elaborated on with the short Brainstorms.

Projection is something that I’ve used a lot in my work, and I love projecting on faces and bodies. I projected memories on a musician for my music video Rome, and projected on smoke for Resurrected by the Foremothers. I think we could do something very bold, and use the environmental assets that you have for Pandora’s box.

Some more ideas in this vein:

Florence + the Machine

I think, encapsulating all of this, are a few videos by Florence Welch, who is the love of my life. Her videos are so visually striking, and manage to do so much with so little. I think if we aspire to this, we are golden. So much about her music, her performance, and the visual storytelling screams WAR CRY to me. I don’t have too much more intellectualizing I can do, so just watch these and muse:

PS: Here’s some Kenneth Anger, just to demonstrate what can be done if we take all of these ideas and push them to their limits.