Provide the name of the practitioner, the title of the work, the date when it was made, and a link to the work.
Laundering my Beats by Chelan (July 15, 2020)
Provide some context on the video by summarising the content, the context of publication, and the audience it targets.
The video sees Chelan going to the laundry room to wash his clothes, and suddenly there were instruments around the room to which he started playing with, and performed a song. The video was used to advertise his new single “limelight” which was released on Spotify. His proposed intended target is typically teenagers and young adults; as the plot of his video revolved around home and doing chores. The video would also target musicians, and fans of the funk genre with his concept of having instruments lying around the house for him to play on, as well as his catchy music and creative approaches.
How was the video made technically?
The video was filmed in one single shot with one moving camera. Chelan’s videographer can be seen holding the camera with her hands, and no tripod or boom mic etc was used. The camera follows Chelan as he plays each instrument present in the laundry room. The music was added in post-production whilst Chelan was miming his instruments when recording the video. No colour grading was present too, as well as any editing other than the pre-recorded soundtrack and the outro at the end of the video.
The video was purposefully trying to come off as simple and homemade, and to which it had been executed well; sometimes less is more.
What similarities and differences can you make with other forms of time-based media?
A similarity that I noticed with the style and aesthetic of his videos are that of a daily vlogger. Aesthetics of making your content simple and homemade, but engaging like vloggers such as “Casey Neistat” or “David Dobrik” can be used as examples for Chelan’s approach.
A difference with other forms of time-based media is audio. Though Chelan’s video is a mini music video promoting his new single, it would not be as effective if done through just audio. Reason being is that a video is able to display visual and audio to prompt engagement and interest in audience, whereas audio i.e. a song can only showcase the song and cover art.
What is innovative about this video? Articulate what makes it different from other examples of video practice you have seen on Instagram.
The video is innovative because it is so simple yet effective. There are rare occurrences where artists promote their song without having any CGI work, fancy animations, or even attention-seeking locations and characters.
The saying less is more is somehow always forgotten in media. More and more creators feel the need to have special effects or impressive camera work with multiple camera angles to impress audiences, whereas Chelan took a different route and stuck to simplicity, making him different and easy to spot out.
Furthermore, his use of the one moving camera and the location of the laundry room was genius in the sense that it created the notion that he is just an ordinary person who enjoys making music; portrays a likeable character which audiences can easily connect with.