One of the music video directors we took a look at during class was Dawn Shadforth, specifically her work on Kylie Minogues video ‘Cant Get You Out of My Head’ and the Goldfrapp song ‘Number 1’.

The Kylie Minogue music video is almost odd to watch now because of the dated styles, but it still retains its fascinating qualities due to the amazing techniques employed by Shadforth. The way Kylie splits and converges her image is very similar to another music video we watched, which for the life of my I cannot remember the name of, where a man catches up to and merges with freezes images of himself on the street. The technique is one that is so fascinating to watch that Shadforth restricted the entirety of the music video to Kylie walking around in circles singing while this effect came into play. While it does fit with the obsessive tone of the song, the effect isn’t quite enough to keep my attention for the entirety of the clip, and the repetitious nature of the video was dizzying. Literally.

When I compare Shadforth’s work on Goldfrapps songs to the songs we would later watch and discuss, I would not pick them as the same artist. The visual and audio aspects of the songs are completely different, which is probably best shown between ‘Number 1’ and ‘Drew’, one of which is a highly fantastic and slightly grotesque technicolour depiction of a dog getting plastic surgery to look like a human, complete with choreography, whereas the other is a soft toned black and white love story that uses soft imagery and slow natural movements.

It is a good experience to be able to look at how the artist has changed directors to suit the style of a particular song, because looking over some of Shadforths other works, they’re all quite high intensity, whereas later in her work Goldfrapp produced song that are much more low key.