Blog 12 - Case Study 3 - Alex Southam

Blog 12 - Case Study 3 - Alex Southam

General Notes on Alex Southam:

He has previously worked for Agile films, who are quite a major film company that hired him as their all round video producer and director. They described him as an "Exciting new talent". Alex Southam has worked with many big name artists such as Walkmen, Alt+J, and Lianne La Havas. 

When Southam began making music videos and producing them as he liked he was the one that organised and carried out every task at hand, he had no help, he did everything from the Camera, Lighting, and editing all by himself. Although now that he is seen as a more recognized and famous music video producer he has some help with him. Southam enjoys creating music videos as he says he like the format that they have because it allows you to "Try new techniques and have real artistic freedom" Because of the same format he is less keen of media products such as commercials as these do not have as much from for freedom as they have to be filled with commercialism and other factors such as product placement. Southam uses a program known as Vimeo to showcase his videos and media texts that he producers and/or directs himself as he describes it as having a "Higher status" than that of youtube. His first major breakthrough onto the music video scene was with that of Alt+J's music video for Tesselate, that he produced himself. It was shot in one day and had a budget of only £10,000. This particular video uses a lt of "Aftereffects" in order to make the video look more interesting and more appealing to certain viewers that prefer this style of music video. 

His Work:

This is quite an unusual music video and it is definitely something that we have never really seen before in terms of music video production and all the general characteristics that come with it. It is a very disjunctive music video as the music video itself does not follow the genre or the relationship to the lyrics in anyway whatsoever, in fact in many ways it just goes off and does its own thing and it only relates to certain lines of the lyrics and only at rare certain points during the video for example the line "You're a shark and i'm swimming". As well as this, this particular music video does not follow any of Goodwin's characteristics of music videos like almost every other music video does, this shows just how much this is pushing the limits of a questionable way to film a music video. 

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As for his other music videos that he produced, he did a very iconic music video for that Chase & Status's song - "Lost and Not Found". This particular music video was filmed with a £50,000 budget and was filmed in only 3 different shots from start to end with the use of a Steadicam It was originally filmed at 36 frames per second and was no longer than a minute and a half but it was all slowed down to give the full effect of what was happening at every point during the music video. 

Just like Southams other music video that we looked at earlier on in this post there are again little to no characteristics that we stated by Goodwin throughout this music video, in fact the only characteristic that we can say even slightly relates to this music video is that of the notion of looking which is used a lot throughout this music video when TV screens and news headlines are shown as the only thing on the screen, It is even shown straight from the beginning of he music video when we see the boy on the bikes eyes directed at the "missing" poster. The way this is filmed being in only 3 whole shots throughout the entirety of the music video is a very risky technique t take on and not only that it is barely ever used by video producers because of this factor. If something to do with the video is messed up right at the end of the last take you will have to do the entirety of the video (or at least that very very long shot) again. 

Unlike the other video by Alt+j this video does follow the relationship of the lyrics and more specifically the story line that the lyrics play out through the song. In many ways this music video instead amplifies set images that are used frequently throughout the course of this musivc video for example the repetitive

use of the "missing" poster with the girl that we see either through TV screens or street posters throughout the video.