Music Video Monday is on Tuesday, because Memorial Day.
I am a sucker for 70s-era video synthesizer looks. Check out one of the greatest music videos ever made, Earth Wind and Fire’s “Lets Groove.”
Those awesome video effects were created by video artist Ron Hays using the Scanimate video synthesizer. Only eight Scanimates were ever built, but you’ve seen their output on countless vintage TV images. The giant machines combined the different video effects that could be achieved in the analog era in one package. Hays threw everything the Scanimate had to offer at “Let’s Groove,” but his use of video feedback is particularly artistic.
It’s probably unfair to compare videos with their inspirations, but director Peter Phillips’ video for Doter Sweetly‘s “Baby Boy” uses projection to achieve Scanimate-style video feedback effects, and I am here for it. Singer Elijah Posten calls the video, which was produced in New Orleans by Loyola University alumni, “a DIY labor of love.”
“‘Baby Boy’ is about coming to understand the preciousness of where you are in life,” says Poston. “I realized that along with my friends and fellow early-to-mid-20-something-year-olds, I had been hyper-focused on a life that I want to live. Some kind of ideal picture that I was yearning for and thinking about while I neglected to appreciate and enjoy the life that I lead every day. ‘Baby Boy’ is a song to myself that I wrote as a reminder that the joyful and satisfying life I get caught up wanting is all right here, with the friends and family and little pleasures that exist in my life already.”
In conjunction with the Memphis Flyer’s annual music issue, which will hit the stands tomorrow, this is officially Music Video Week on the Flyer’s Film/TV/Etc. Blog. Stay tuned every day this week for exceptional music videos, both new and old, from Memphis artists. And as always, if you’d like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email [email protected].
