London-based designer and film director Simon Owens was named by ID Magazine one of 200 most important creatives for the future. I couldn’t agree more! Simon has done some interesting work for artists like Tiga, Whomadewho and LCD Soundsystem, but it wasn’t until his beautiful film for CARIBOU that he caught my attention.

D.O.P: Sam Brown
Wardrobe: Mimi Milburn Foster
Hair and Make-up: Cate Hall
Editor: James Rose at Cut and Run
Grade: Andrew Daniel at Molinare

I like a lot about it. The casting, the directing, the location, the styling and first and foremost the guts to shoot a song called “Sun” in the half-light of a living room. It’s original and daring and has a nice and unexpected turn midway through it.

DOP: Marcus Domleo
Editor: Julian Eguiguren
Effects: Joel Gethin Lewis, Michael Trott, Simon Owens

This one for Dave.I.D is more experimental and visually challenging. I like how the 80s-videomixer-like effects blend in with real projections and 3-d-animation so that, in the end, you can’t tell what’s what. The dizziness kind of pulls you in and doesn’t let go easily…
Of course it fits the atmosphere of the song, which is all longing and lament and very beautiful, too.
The overall look is adapted (and imho perfected) from an earlier Dave.I.D Video by director Danny Sagra.

UPDATE: This last passage needs to be revised. Simon told me that “the ‘I like the sound of them without me’ video idea wasn’t adapted from the ‘Why weren’t the message sent?’ video, it was actually conceived way before WWTMS, it just took longer to come out.” Sorry, Simon!

I’d also like to believe the look&feel of this video is part of an anti- “clean, clean & crisp” video-aesthetic (which predominates since the upcoming of DLSR-film making). I probably just make this up, but it seems to me, that a lot of people who cheered (and rightly so) when the Canon 5D was introduced in 2005 (it’s that long ago!!!), are getting kind of bored by it now (or is it just me?). I mean, how many “beautiful” panoramas and pull focus arias can you do before it gets stale altogether? But I digress…

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