Alex Southam case study

At the start of his career, Southam undertook all the tasks in his videos himself. Regarded as a ''One Man Band'' he took care of camera work, lighting, editing and all other related tasks.

Initially Southam worked for Agile Films, where he is described on their website as ''an exciting new talent working in a dizzying variety of styles across live action and animation. Entirely self-taught, his inventiveness and creativity have caught the eye with a series of diverse promos for the likes of the Walkmen, Alt+Jm and Lianne La Havas. Alex joined Agile in August 2012.''

Southam claims to like the format of music videos as they grant the artist creative freedom, they grant you the ability to try new techniques and integrate them among techniques that are established and effective.

Uses Vimeo as a platform to showcase his work, which is becoming and increasingly more popular platform.
His breakthrough into the industry came with his video for the song ''Tessellate'' by Alt-J. This video had a budget of £10,000, was shot in one day and had a remarkably large cast.  This video does not tell a story , it is difficult to infer a lot from it as the cast is standing around not doing much, which shows a disconnect between audio and video. It is worth noting though that even in a video like this, which is not in any way suggestive or voyeuristic, the women are wearing tighter clothing which is in line with some of the issues outlined by Laura Mulvey.

The following music video I will by analysing is Chase and Status' Lost and Not Found. This video had a budget of £50,000. It was filmed at 36 frames per second and then slowed down during the editing stage, captured with the use of steadicams. This video received influence from Massive Attack's ''Unfinished Sympathy'' and was filmed in only three shots with difficult to spot edits. At the beginning of the video, the visuals contradict the audio because they are aggressive compared to the relatively calm pace and lyrics of the song. A woman and a man can be seen arguing and the audio does not match this. This theme of aggression is not consistent, but it also comes up again at the very end of the video. Despite the fact that this video only has three edits, it keeps going at a rather high pace, this may be due to the fact that it was initially filmed at thirty six frames and then slowed down.



The final video I will be looking at is ''Rumble And Sway'' by Jamie N Commons. This video has a very ambiguous editing style, dark colours are used and the two people are never shown clearly, which makes the audience wonder. Close ups are used throughout of the male performer, while the female is shown at medium shot most of the time, which may imply that they are distant from each other despite the audio suggesting that they are attracted to one another, or at the very least, he is attracted to her.