Brighton from Public Record on Vimeo.
This piece uses the energy and excitement associated with music videos to bring an urgency to the story, but it uses the techniques of storytelling associated with documentary to expand the meaning in the music video. Often in music videos there is “music video logic” which kinda means that unexplainable happenings and non sequiturs work whether or not they really work. There is a general progression of events, but if random stuff happens along the way it will still “make sense.” In “Brighton” we find a short documentary that has adapted itself to a song while holding onto a the techniques and aesthetic associated with its genre of origin. The filmmaker notes that this is a hybrid in the description and it truly feels like it. Sometimes you can mask bad filmmaking by slapping a song down under the visuals. The song will then distract from the potentially bad storytelling, but in this video it does feel like the two genres are working together. While you may enjoy the song I don’t think you will ever be distracted from the power of the story being told.
Wow, the story here is simple yet it’s so powerful and engaging. What i love is how the director made some of the photos which you might think of as video jump cuts, but they are actually stills put together in a fast pace. I was just curious about the director’s artistic choice of starting the video with black and white then 70s cam’s quality and then switched to today quality cameras.