The great thing about going to a screening of music videos is that they are only a few minutes long, so sitting through 90 minutes of tunes and moving pictures is not difficult, even for the most severe A.D.D. personality. Just to re-cap, the weekend before last the good folks at Music Video Race paired 20 bands with 20 filmmaking teams to produce 20 music videos in 48 hours. This past Saturday (June 15), the videos were screened and awards given. Even without a red carpet or paparazzi, the event, which melded the Bay Area’s vibrant music and film communities, was truly special — an evening to be seen and on the scene at the Rickshaw Stop.
These days, given the Internet’s instant ubiquity, it’s hard to control a music video’s release, which means that very little remains secret or undiscovered or even newsworthy for long. Sure, Consequence of Sound, Rolling Stone, and Pitchfork premiere music videos daily, but how often does an audience get to see videos for the very first time in the same room as the bands and filmmakers?
The surprises were genuine; we didn’t have a schedule of the order in which the videos would be shown. They played on two large screens back to back with a short introduction stating the band name, song title, and film crew before each video. It was during that introduction that the audience would cheer with excitement, identifying the pockets of fans and supporters throughout the venue. There were a few projects that fell far below the bar of expectations both in concept and performance, which was a friendly reminder of the constraints that surround conceiving of, filming, producing, and editing a short film in 48 hours. A selection of middling videos relied heavily on bands playing in parks, ocean tides washing things away, and the ever-popular rock band party scenario. The cream of the crop, however, really showcased the musicians’ and filmmakers’ ability to create something intriguing and substantial on the fly.
My top five favorites were: Animal Friend’s “Hypochondriac” directed by Javier Briones; Ash Reiter’s “Treasure Island,” under the direction of Andrew Callaway; Happy Fangs’ “Lion Inside You” via Blake Smith; a very traditional approach to the form from Sean Gillane for Mammoth Life’s “Teen Dreamin”; and lastly, A-1’s “Retinas” by Alexander Weinberg. Ash Reiter and Happy Fangs cleaned out the awards.