How do we hurt the ones we love? Davis Silis at Bullion directs this visceral and passionate new music video 'A Friend' by South London duo Formation.
From the director:
The song’s lyrics evoke a lot of questions about the nature of friendship, of loneliness, of relationships, and this video just became an extension of those questions. What are the boundaries of friendship and love? Is there a difference? How do we hurt those we love and why do we so often push them away when we need them the most?
So, the idea was to take a familiar trope, the violence of an all-out movie brawl, and use it as a device to pose those questions. The video itself doesn’t provide answers — not because there aren’t any, but because the answers are so deeply personal to those who ask.
Working with fight coordinator Kevin McCurdy, we created one long fight sequence that unfolds on a Victoria Line train in London with actor Isaac Money and Formation’s singer Will Ritson himself, who deserves huge credit for pulling this off despite dislocating his shoulder during one of the very first setups on the day.
Released to coincide with what would have been his 70th birthday, this posthumous clip is part lyric video and part mood piece, but primarily a reminder that Bowie's ghost will haunt us for as long as there are screens and speakers and eyes and ears.
The warehouse rock performance might be a stock video set-up, but Malia James keeps it fresh by hitting all the right angles and lighting in this sharp one for Catfish And The Bottlemen.
The music video fantasy falls apart on purpose in this revealing clip where Josef Salvat and director Ollie Wolf point out and send-up all the stock elements you'd usually see in somethingmlike this.
The multi-talented Ciaran Lyons put his body on the line for Virgin/EMI duo Slaves, both in front and behind the camera, describing his electric new video as, "like an episode of Bottom directed by Jan Svankmajer. This aesthetic concept guided all my decision making: the grimy production design, the extensive use of action-based close-ups, the slapstick violence, and the Rick Mayall inspired performance."
The narrative impulse behind ‘Calling Me’ was immediate. A story familiar to us all. There’s a vulnerability we all face growing up. Grappling with who you are. Who you want to become. You’re driven by instinct as much as reacting to what’s going on around you. What others think of you. And that’s the battle we’ve all had to fight.
"The aim was for the video to show two very distinct depictions of Hero and the band. It was about acknowledging that they are simultaneously performers, and just a bunch of friends who play music together.
So one section of the video is very stylised and theatrical, and the other section is as natural and raw as possible. Once we started pushing this concept a bit further, we ended up experimenting with different filming equipment and techniques. It was a really playful process."
