DISTANT RELATIVES "Patience" from nabil elderkin on Vimeo.
PART ONE: NABIL.COM
I didn't pay any attention to its director when I first watched it a few months ago (Kanye had tweeted with praise, as though he was a friend of the director's, or had previously worked with him), but I looked it up again recently because I wanted to listen to Patience while on a computer at uni. Its vimeo page has a link to Elderkin's website, Nabil.com, so I had a look.The first thing that struck me was the unique way it's layed out. I actually like it, just white with a very long horizontal-scrolling line of videos, almost like a gallery of frames, each as visually artistic & classy as the last. I only scrolled across to see if Nabil has made music videos for any other artists or song that I know (he has; Kanye, k'naan, Bruno Mars) but I ended up fascinated and a little attracted to this idea of a catalogue of music singles compiled by the filmmaker. A showreel. With music videos it's always the opposite; a collection of songs listed by artist.
PART TWO: DISTANT RELATIVES MUSIC VIDEOS
My friend showed me the film clip for another song on the album, Nah Mean.
It's also a cool video but a completely different style to that in Patience. The two are almost opposites. It got me thinking about different philosophies in making music videos, different approaches. Should you tell a separate story in your film clip? Create a piece of visual art? Simply have a raw display of music, filming a live or studio performance of the song? It's an interesting medium, and I can see why so many filmmakers hone their skills on it. It's a short video but can include a vast range of narrative and stylistic possibilities.
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