Now completely finished and given the stamp of approval from Rohan, I’m going to talk a little bit about my group Hawaii Five-Oh’s music video for Pockets‘ latest single “Ten Different Names”.
The concept for the video was born out of a few listens to the song and some wild ideas tossed back and forth between the group. One of the initial unspoken concerns was that all of the ideas for the video were a bit up in the air – all interesting in theory but possibly a bit of an ordeal to execute (often a situation I find myself in). Rohan didn’t originally seem completely sold on the idea either.
I have to thank Nikki for getting the ball rolling – she was the first to actually go home, produce something and share it with us. What she did go home and produce formed the basis of the entire intro and first verse of the finished result – a quietly psychedelic milk-meets-paint swirl. This served as the catalyst for a myriad of experiments to follow, including Steph’s layers of coloured paper, Luna’s smoke-machine rave effect, Yuxin’s gentle paint+water effect and my explosive stop-motion colours.
The original idea was to follow the band’s silhouette-based design and have the vocalist as a silhouette singing against psychedelic effects, which would build in intensity and vibrancy as the video progressed, eventually followed by similar effects being produced within the vocalist’s silhouette. A lot of this was ultimately produced but a few things here and there changed as we came up with different ideas in the production and post-production processes. We ended up ditching the idea to produce effects within the silhouette – admittedly at first because it was a bit of a stretch beyond our capabilities, later settling instead on the reasoning that it was a smart move conceptually to keep the figure completely blacked-out.
Other than that, most of what we pitched in the third project brief is what came to be executed in the finished product. I think this was due to us having a simple idea that we stuck to from the moment we came up with it and communicating with each other/being organised throughout the process. We also made sure that we were aware of everyone’s unique skills that they could bring to the development of the video in order for us to work well collaboratively. I think the video works well stylistically in comparison to the band’s image and logo while also fitting really well to the song sonically as well, which we took great care to achieve. Some of the effects that we attempted in the video are perhaps not 100% the most awe-inspiring thing you’ll ever see but I think they are attention-grabbing and do effectively stand out from a lot of music videos you see these days.
The work feels equally informed by Tame Impala style visuals (see “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards”) as it does iPod commercials circa 2001. Given the feel of the song itself, I would say this is a pretty accurate blend of references. I’m really pleased with the end result and if called upon again by the band for more visual work I would gladly rise to the task.