Music Video Showreel
(2000 – 2010)
List of Work
“Do You Remember 2023 Tour” Darren Hayes
“In Our Blood” ABC TV series
“Redemption” The Dream Spiral
“Love Blind Love” Tycho Brahe
“Desire + Control” Tycho Brahe
“Make Me Feel Free” Tycho Brahe
“Woulda Coulda Shoulda” Elizabeth Rose
“You Can” Skipping Girl Vinegar
“Black Out the Sun” Darren Hayes
“Me Myself & I” Darren Hayes
“Crush” Darren Hayes
“Time Machine Tour 2007” Darren Hayes
“Dell TVC” Megan Washington
“Sunday Best” Megan Washington
“Rich Kids” Megan Washington
“Bodies” Little Birdy
“Summarise” Little Birdy
“Lost and Running” Powderfinger
“Words” Kate Miller Heidke
“Make it Last” Kate Miller Heidke
“I Understand What You Want” The Sleepy Jackson
“God Lead Your Soul” The Sleepy Jackson
“Funky Tonight” John Butler Trio
“What’s on your Radio” The Living End
“Wake Up” The Living End
“Don’t Feel That Way” Tycho Brahe
“Do You Believe” Specificus
“25 Tour” (choreography of projection footage) George Michael
“Affirmation Tour 2000” Savage Garden
Music Video Choreography & Movement Styling
My role in working on music videos is that of a choreographer or movement stylist. I am not the director or writer, and what I bring to the music video is what is required of the film treatment. It is often exciting to be presented with such challenges, however, the degree of creative freedom is very much bound by someone else’s idea: the concept of the video which the director has worked hard to conceptualise, write (with lots of visual references carefully tendered), and pitch to the record company and band management in a highly competitive but low-budget market.
Today in Australia, budgets for music videos are just a fraction of what they were in the 1980s and 1990s. In James Freud’s 2002 biography “I am the Voice left from Drinking”, James Freud (of the Models) discusses the budget of their track, 1989 track Hurricane in chapter 14 titled “It cost how much?”,
“Being the director of choice at the time, Claudia Castle was brought in to make the video. And guess what? It was only going to cost $150 000, which, back then was a huge budget….. The video was bigger than Ben-Hur, with truckloads of sand dumped in the Homebush Sports Centre, a cast of dancers and a squillion lights. (p262)
Despite budgets today being lucky to be even a tenth of this, music videos still have a lingering lucrative stigma, and perhaps artists have expectations of their music videos looking like more expensive predecessors.
Due to smaller budgets, most directors take on music video gigs, which offer creative potential – often a chance to create something they couldn’t explore in a more rigid TV Commercial. However, as a choreographer, the creative freedom is not as vast, and I am always aware that music videos function to sell the artist and sell a product. Fortunately, I have my own independent projects (and more recently, a dance film) where I can own an idea and have creative freedom in my artistic expression.
Not to say it is all ‘creative cardboard’; sometimes there are specific requirements for the choreography. For example, one Sleepy Jackson music video treatment required a fusion of old-school Hollywood musical style and robotic movement. That was fun! Darren Hayes’ music “Black Out The Sun” required raven-like contemporary dance, which was bliss.
“Do You Remember” (2023 World Tour) Darren Hayes
In 2023, I choreographed Darren Hayes’ 2023 International Tour titled “Do You Remember”. It followed his new record released in 2022 titled ‘Homosexual’. It was a treat to work with Darren again. Following the choreography aspect of the work, I ended up working on the tour in several roles, including backstage and remotely as his PA. I even edited these two promotional montages for him and the tour. It was such a wonderful time – one of the best years of my life.
“Redemption” The Dream Spiral 2024
“Black Out The Sun – Behind the Scenes” Darren Hayes 2011
Having worked with Darren previously, and with my brother, the director, ensured a slick and professional working environment as well. Another great thing about this video was that Darren embraced working with dance.
However, the music videos I have choreographed are more often indie acts, where dance is a reluctant choice, and the director has had to do a hard sell to incorporate dance due to the stigma associated with more commercial and glitzy music videos. Indie music isn’t typically associated with dance, unlike mainstream pop. In some instances, getting dance over the line required that I write a choreographic treatment for inclusion in the director’s treatment to ensure the management and record label were convinced that the choreography wouldn’t be a triangular formations commercial dance sequence, akin to a Britney Spears Music Video. (However, some artists secretly want the ‘Britney’ triangular formation dance scene.)
These are a few of the music videos I have worked on between 2000 and 2016.