Commentary

A little nostalgia and simplicity go a long way.

Whenever I watch CMT, my dad always comes in and says something like, "I think one of the biggest wastes of time and money is the music video. I just don't understand it."

As far as some music videos go, I would agree. Some are cool works of art, but yes - some are just white noise in a world of streaming media, and some are just plain weird.

This past week, however, I came across a music video that was original, clean, and... well... bright. It's the video for David Crowder Band's song "Shine," and it was made entirely with stop-motion filming techniques. It was directed, shot and edited by the band without using any computer graphics or animation. And it's brilliant.

The central feature of the video is the nostalgic 1980's toy Lite-Brite. The band used more than 700,000 pegs to compose 1,200 Lite-Brite images. It took 2,150 man-hours and 83 people to make the different Lite-Brite scenes.

DCB Lite-Brite video

Unfortunately, this version of Wordpress won't let me embed the video, but you can check it out here.

I think it just goes to show that in the midst of all this technology and media, something as simple as a Lite-Brite and flipbook-style filming can make me stop and say, "Wow." I'd love to see more music videos that are simple, tell a good story and get at the heart of what music is about: emotion, expression, beauty and real life. Take out the AfterEffects, the auto-tuning and the computer-generated rhythms and get back to the heart of music and people.

Then maybe my dad would understand why we spend money on music videos.

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