This is OK-Go’s new music video “Obsession” that came out this week, and while watching this truly remarkable feat of creativity and ingenuity It felt remarkably like a Michel Gondry video. Its use of stop motion and eye popping visuals seem to be directly influenced by Gondry’s early work with The White Stripes and Björk, while still feeling utterly unique to the band’s previous works and creative theatrics.

This made me think about our music videos and how we are influenced by certain filmmakers and more specifically music videos creators, and how we hope to use those influences combined with our own unique approaches to create something great. It is great to see an artist who draws from other works the same way we would in our videos, as it is very easy for us to get a sense of Imposter’s Syndrome and not feel the we are contributing to the form by not being utterly original. My group is drawing influences both narratively and aesthetically from a variety of different places and mediums, hoping that along the way we create our own unique video.

 

“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.” – C.S. Lewis.