Some of my favorite music videos are the ones that are shot in one continuous take. Making one-shots usually involve meticulous planning and a whole lot of elaborate preparation for all involved, regardless of which side of the camera they sit. One missed camera cue, one flubbed lip-synch, one mistake at all and it's back to square one.
It's hard enough when you make regular video or film, where at least then you usually have the comparative luxury of filming just a few seconds at a time before turning off the cameras, figuring out where next to set up the camera, what next to say and how to position your body while saying it. So when a single-shot video is done well, I usually get a huge kick out of it, grinning like an idiot and respecting the amount of work that goes into the effort.
Here then are a few of my favorite one-shot music videos.
We'll start out easy with one that you likely have already seen, but it's a great example of the huge amount of prep work that must have gone on before the camera ever powered up. Four guys + one camera + eight treadmills = OK Go's "Here It Goes Again"
Feist has a couple of them, "I Feel It All" and "1234". Sorry, I couldn't embed the vids here, so you'll have to click the above links the old-fashioned way.
"The Underdog" from Spoon's 2007 release Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga wanders a complicated course through the recording studio. I also like it because it the hand-clapping or wood block clacking in the song. Whatever it is, it really hooked me in the first time I heard the song.
Lastly, check out the semi-obscure but still awesome 1994 video "Lucas With The Lid Off" by Lucas. It was directed by the ever-inventive Michel Gondry, who later went on to direct about a bajillion other videos as well as films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep.
The "Lid Off" one-shot tracks Lucas as he plays a recording artist supervising his own creative process and subsequent success. The whole thing has a ragtimey feel that features Lucas in a bewildering variety of sets, here riding the subway or laying on the bed in his little micro-hovel apartment, there at the soundboard mixing his own song. Check it out!
Wikipedia brings us a partial list (I know there must be more than this) of one-shot music videos, and this comment thread from a Snopes forum of a couple of years ago mentions some more.
UPDATE:
Craig Xor mentioned The Matches video "Salty Eyes" as a good candidate, and I concur. Here's the vid:
...and here's a look behind the scenes showing The Making of "Salty Eyes":
Another one that came to mind is the classic Bob Dylan "Subterranean Homesick Blues".
Technorati tags: video, music, one-shot
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"Salty Eyes" - The Matches
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