Director File Presents ·· The Ten Best Music Videos of 2006

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Seb Martel "Motus"
directed by Arno Salters

In the fight to become the next Gondry, Arno Salters seems to be winning. His catalog of stop-motion videos holds testament to the happy-go-lucky-yet-hard-working style that Michel transcended into utter brilliance. And with "Motus," Salters creates the most heavily Gondrian video on the planet. It's got the visual trickery, the cute-but-sincere art direction, a sense of the familial, film projection, and is filmed in one languorous take.

It reminds me most closely of Lucas With the Lid Off and Protection, both of which floated through a vast library of setups. Salters kept it simple, though. Instead of creating a brilliant, massive labyrinth of projection screens, props, and people, he focuses on a relatively small cabinet of curios.

Pitch-perfect and simple. Thank you, Arno Salters, crew, and Seb!

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OK Go "Here It Goes Again"
directed by OK Go and Trish Sie

The emphasis here is on replay. "Here It Goes Again," in all of its one-take glory, is one of the most rewatchable pieces of video I've ever seen. What made "A Million Ways" a goofy artifact of the YouTube era makes "Here It Goes Again" worthy of being called a music video masterpiece. Its treadmill choreography is joyous, playful, and inventive, and OK Go's performance is so dorky, but - okay, it's time to confess - it hits all the right notes with its intended audience.

The video's closest ancestor is "Everybody Have Fun Tonight", a Wang Chung video directed by 80's music video titans Godley & Creme.

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The Softlightes "Heart Made of Sound"
directed by Kris Moyes

Reminiscent of those segments on Sesame Street where they film words, letters, and numbers in the real world, "Heart Made of Sound" is a colorific explosion of ideas edited tightly into the Softlightes' stirring and sprightly track.

Its stop-motion simplicity is tinged with the flavor of Gondry, but it is most reminiscent of Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" (dir. Stephen R. Johnson), one of the best and most important music videos ever made.

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Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Gold Lion"
directed by Patrick Daughters

What makes a performance video a good video? Is it the performers? Absolutely. But while there are thousands of videos made with great performers, the director's vision must equal their artist's charisma - or, at the very least, be able to capture some good footage that can be edited later.

"Gold Lion" captures all of that and more. It has all of the right elements: a high level of directorial creativity on Daughters' behalf, plus a band at the top of their game. It then ups the ante with excellent cinematography by Shawn Kim, as well as supreme editing by Akiko Iwakawa, production design by Dani Tull, and styling (?).

"Gold Lion" also has the honor of breaking a 13-year ban on MTV. Back in 1993, an incident involving a young child's fatal pyromania was blamed on Beavis and Butt-head's frequent use of the word "fire," something that was one of Beavis' loves. Alas, not many are carrying the torch of rock n' roll as much as this video is. We can only hope that Tenacious D will bring the pain!


	Muse "Knights of Cydonia" directed by Joseph Kahn "Knights of Cydonia" was made for these two lines: "No one's going to take me alive" and "You and I must fight for our rights." Sung Freddie Mercury-style, it's those kind of long-unheard vocal dramatics that fuels this passion play-cum-genre-hopping action flick that Joseph Kahn was born to film. This is arguably Joseph Kahn's finest video in an ouevre that is one of the most impressive in the history of pop video. With his eyes focused squarely on a feature film career, Kahn shrinks his collection of influences into six minutes of stunning direction, art direction, cinematography, styling and editing. While I can't name-check all of the Tarantino-esque closet of artifacts that the video contains, I can mention that its highly sophisticated blend of references is what ultimately sells the piece. That and Muse's ultra-fucking-cool Queen homage. Not since Radiohead's "Paranoid Android" has a 6 minute-long video been this goddamn enjoyable. --------------- Seb Martel "Motus" directed by Arno Salters In the fight to become the next Gondry, Arno Salters seems to be winning. His catalog of stop-motion videos holds testament to the happy-go-lucky-yet-hard-working style that Michel transcended into utter brilliance. And with "Motus," Salters creates the most heavily Gondrian video on the planet. It's got the visual trickery, the cute-but-sincere art direction, a sense of the familial, film projection, and is filmed in one languorous take. It reminds me most closely of Lucas With the Lid Off and Protection, both of which floated through a vast library of setups. Salters kept it simple, though. Instead of creating a brilliant, massive labyrinth of projection screens, props, and people, he focuses on a relatively small cabinet of curios. Pitch-perfect and simple. Thank you, Arno Salters, crew, and Seb! --------------- OK Go "Here It Goes Again" directed by OK Go and Trish Sie The emphasis here is on replay. "Here It Goes Again," in all of its one-take glory, is one of the most rewatchable pieces of video I've ever seen. What made "A Million Ways" a goofy artifact of the YouTube era makes "Here It Goes Again" worthy of being called a music video masterpiece. Its treadmill choreography is joyous, playful, and inventive, and OK Go's performance is so dorky, but - okay, it's time to confess - it hits all the right notes with its intended audience. The video's closest ancestor is "Everybody Have Fun Tonight", a Wang Chung video directed by 80's music video titans Godley & Creme. --------------- The Softlightes "Heart Made of Sound" directed by Kris Moyes Reminiscent of those segments on Sesame Street where they film words, letters, and numbers in the real world, "Heart Made of Sound" is a colorific explosion of ideas edited tightly into the Softlightes' stirring and sprightly track. Its stop-motion simplicity is tinged with the flavor of Gondry, but it is most reminiscent of Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" (dir. Stephen R. Johnson), one of the best and most important music videos ever made. --------------- Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Gold Lion" directed by Patrick Daughters What makes a performance video a good video? Is it the performers? Absolutely. But while there are thousands of videos made with great performers, the director's vision must equal their artist's charisma - or, at the very least, be able to capture some good footage that can be edited later. "Gold Lion" captures all of that and more. It has all of the right elements: a high level of directorial creativity on Daughters' behalf, plus a band at the top of their game. It then ups the ante with excellent cinematography by Shawn Kim, as well as supreme editing by Akiko Iwakawa, production design by Dani Tull, and styling (?). "Gold Lion" also has the honor of breaking a 13-year ban on MTV. Back in 1993, an incident involving a young child's fatal pyromania was blamed on Beavis and Butt-head's frequent use of the word "fire," something that was one of Beavis' loves. Alas, not many are carrying the torch of rock n' roll as much as this video is. We can only hope that Tenacious D will bring the pain! <-- Part One Published Dec. 14, 2006. Several minor corrections made on Dec. 15, 2006. This page (C) 2006 Kevin Holy. All rights reserved. Welcome to director-file.com.