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December 27, 2011
Nerve's Eight Best Music Videos of 2011
As selected by acclaimed cinematographer and director Max Goldman.
by Max Goldman
Max Goldman has shot videos for Gnarls Barkley, Jay Z, The Killers, Cat Power, Rihanna, and Jakob Dylan, and recently directed the video "Pyro" for Kings of Leon. We asked Max what he thought were the best videos of the year; here are his choices.
M83, "Midnight City," directed by Fleur & Manu
This is a concept that we've seen before, but it's done as well as I've seen anyone do it. It feels creepy and real at the same time. And the directors got really great performances out of the kids.
Commentarium (12 Comments)
As an artist, I can see why Max Goldman picked these eight videos. They are artisticly stunning – it did not matter if I liked a particular song or not, the mood emoted by the video kept my attention and drew me into the world created by the director and fulfilled by the cinematographer.
If pressed, my favorite would be: Massive Attack, "Pray For Rain," directed by Jake Scott.
Followed by: Woodkid, "Iron," directed by Yoann Lemoine.
Yet another crap shit list. Jesus.
Holocene by Bon Iver is amazing. Just putting it out there.
Along with your reputation. Sorry about the fail.
Big agree on the camera work for the Bryan John Appleby tune. The song may not be my taste, but it didn't matter because I spent the whole time trying to figure out how it was shot. I kept looking for a wake from the camera boat, and I couldn't see it. Assuming it's not digitally altered, I'm guessing it would have been shot from another boat with an electric trolling motor. Those things are pretty precise, they don't suck in any air, and you can submerge them pretty deep to avoid the wake issue.
Glad to see "Iron" on this list. Fantastic song and equally fantastic video.
All of which is utterly irrelevant and a tangent, I admit, but these idle tangents of thought are how I like to spend my time. Next task: catalgue every frame of the first Transformers movie and speculate on the camera angle used for each. I'll be back with that later.
Not that anyone should care, but I didn't write this. Perhaps Nerve should just go with a unique login system (or use facebook/yahoo/etc. like other sites). The Captcha really doesn't work that well, and it's annoying.
And I also meant to add that there are much better Captcha systems out there. For instance, there are some on some other web sites that don't suck as much. Just sayin'.
I would have said "Adele makes this whole list a joke" and then I saw the same video I watch everyday on that list, The Kills - Future Starts Slow.... OH MY GOD I LOVE THAT VIDEO.
spike jonze's suburbs for arcade fire anyone?
What no Cruel - St Vincent? Pretty good vid