Case Study - Alex Southam

Described by Agile Films in 2012 as "an exciting new talent… entirely self-taught… working in a dizzying variety of styles across live action and animation". He has made a diverse portfolio for himself, working with the likes of companies such as Walkman, and artists like Alt+J and Lianne La Havas.

Southam operates with a "one man band" mentality, performing the tasks needed to make a music video by himself. That means he would setup and film, organize lighting and edit the footage all by himself. Making sure he could take full credit for all his work but now as he has become more popular, he has a director of photography in order to help him with his camera and lighting work.

He prefers to make music videos than to make commercials as there is more artistic freedom in making them and commercials are often restrictive in what directors can and cannot do. Vimeo is his more preferable website to share his videos as he feels it has higher status than YouTube and is becomingly in the music industry.

His Works

His breakthrough came with the music video for “Tessellate” by Alt-J, he had a budget of £10,000, use of a very large cast and was able to add special effects through the use of AfterEffects. In regards to a storyline, there isn’t much to go on as it consists mainly of people standing around doing nothing and doesn’t really relate to the actual song, suggesting a disjuncturing relation between the two.

Another music video he is known for is the one for Chase and Status' "Lost and Not Found",working with a budget of £50,000, filming in Los Angeles and inspired by Massive Attack's "Unfinshed Sympathy". Alex wanted to get an early 1990's video look and film the entire music video in one take with a Steadicam. He intially filmed the entire video at 36 frames per second instead of the normal 24, slowing it down during editing. There are only three shots in this whole vido, which really emphasisie the lack of editing put into this video. In regards to Goodwin's theory, you could argue the music video is an illustrative one as it relates to the lyrics of the song, a fugitive on the loose.