Untitled from Jacob Landis-Eigsti on Vimeo.**Added note: Apparently this video is now not available - not sure why. Even my Vimeo password does not work.....sheesh.
Here is the Goshen College blurb about the video:
GOSHEN, Ind. -- Goshen College junior Jacob Landis-Eigsti, a communication and theater double major from Lakewood, Colo., is a master at making videos that people love. And one of his recentprojects caught the attention of national judges. Landis-Eigsti's music video "Beautiful" won second place in the 2011 Broadcast Education Association (BEA) National Competition. The video features independent Nashville musician Phoebe Sharp, was filmed on the Goshen College campus and around town, and includes dancing by Goshen College senior Brett Bridges.
Landis-Eigsti told the Goshen College Record that the song is about "trying to find beauty in everyday life," and that the video "shows beauty in people, beauty in nature around us ... like the stuff that we walk by that we don't really notice." Landis-Eigsti will accept his award at this year's BEA National Festival of Media Arts in April in Las Vegas, Nev. More than 1,600 professors, students and media professionals are currently individual members of BEA and approximately 275 college and university departments and schools are institutional members.
"This is a great continuation of Jacob's success after he won first place for a different music video in a state competition last year, contributing to Goshen College being named 2010 Television School of the Year," said Seth Conley, assistant professor of communication."BEA is the premiere radio and television education organization i the United States and the competition is highly competitive. His award is a great accomplishment."
My dislike of music videos dates back to when they first came out. The problem is that the images flash by too darn quickly. I first noticed it with advent of cable TV. Images began flashing by so quickly in TV advertising and program intros that it totally jarred the senses. If one watches the start of a sports or news program today, the pace and content of the images is dizzying. I like to be able to view, digest, and enjoy images, not have them rushed by so quickly that it is the equivalent of downing a gourmet meal in one minute. Perhaps this is the culmination of what William Butler Yeats predicted in 1919 in The Second Coming, “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” That is what it feels like watching music videos and other TV nowadays.
ReplyDeleteWell said, SSS. I have had the same thoughts, but did not verbalize it as well as you. It seems to be de rigueur in many TV shows and ads these days, and I find the style most annoying. And, I am not even sure what the technique is supposed to convey. Urgency? Action? ..... ?
ReplyDeleteMusic videos were originally made by stoners for stoners. Tetrahydrocannabinol, the intoxicant in cannabis, has the effect of slowing down the perception of time, thus, what appears to be a too rapid pace to a sober individual may actually appear normal to the stoner. Moral of the story? If the doctor tells you you have six months to live, consume lots of cannabis and move to New Paris.
ReplyDeleteBB- LOL!!
ReplyDeleteActually, music videos could be considered a Satanic plot. The rapid fire images in music videos are such an assault on the senses as to render them artistically meaningless. One cannot possibly absorb any aesthetic. The result is a spiritual numbness to such expressions.
ReplyDeleteThe third stage of Nihilism is the Vitalist stage of society. People deliver themselves over to an unending search for sensation and excitement, for the exotic and the experimental, for ever-greater freedom and satisfaction of desires, for the “riches of diversity,” for the transforming “energy” that is produced by a society in constant change and motion - and with all these things being seen as, even explicitly promoted as, a substitute for any inherent truth and goodness in existence. I predict that as Vitalism reaches its peak, the final stage of Nihilism will start to appear. This is the Nihilism of Destruction, “a rage against creation and against civilization that will not be appeased until it has reduced them to absolute nothingness.”
Quite a mouthful Nostra. One could also think of music videos as a communist plot. A book came out in 1958, The Naked Communist, by Cleon Skousen, which listed the goals of communism, among them being to: “Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. Eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms. Promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art." Nothing could be more meaningless than flashing unconnected images too fast for the brain to absorb while plunking away on musical instruments and wailing a song.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting progression from a music video to nihilism! However, I must say that there is much truth here. The US culture is dominated by meaningless and non-productive activities, from Wall Street to Hollywood. Some well-respected biologists have forecast that humans will be extinct within 100 years. I would probably not go out on that limb, but I do believe that there will be some major changes in the world order in the not-too-distant future. If I were to make a wager on humans or the earth, I would pick the earth :-)
ReplyDeleteRe: humans extinct withing 100 years. If the earth is reduced to rubble, but not poisoned to the point life can't exist, I believe the few humans left will form into tribes for survival. As the tribes grow and rivalries ensue, they will clash with their weapons of rocks, spears, and bows and arrows. Am sure someone has said that WWIV will be fought with sticks and stones.
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