Music Video Showreel
(2000 – 2009)
List of Videos
“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 working on music videos is as 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 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 the smaller budgets, most directors take Music Video gigs due to the creative potential – often a chance to make something that they could not explore on a more rigid TV Commercial. However as a choreographer, the creative freedom is not as vast and I am always aware that music video functions to sell the artist; to sell a product. Fortunately I have my own independent projects (and more recently 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’s specific requirements for the choreography: For example one Sleepy Jackson music video treatment required the movement to be a fusion of old school hollywood musicals meets the robot. That was fun! Darren Hayes’ music “Black Out The Sun” required raven-like contemporary dance, which was bliss. This is the BTS documentary.
“Black Out The Sun – Behind the Scenes” Darren Hayes 2011
Having worked with Darren previous and with my brother the director meant a slick and professional working environment too. Another great thing about this video was that Darren embraced working with dance.
However, the music videos I have choreographed are more so indie acts where dance is a reluctant choice and often the director has had to do a hard sell to use dance because of the stigma of more commercial and glitzy music videos. Indie music isn’t exactly associated with dance, like mainstream pop is. In some instances, getting dance over the line required I write a choreographic treatment for inclusion in the directors’ treatment to ensure the management and record label was convinced the choreography wasn’t going to be triangular formations commercial dance sequence aka Britney Spears Music Video. (However i think that 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.