Hollow's newly released music video " The Look ", has been subject to some scrutiny and prompted a handful of critics to question their originality claiming it " Reduces viewer enjoyment " as its similarities to the original piece seem somewhat coincidental. Band members are yet to respond to these disapproving reviews, however director Tarun Solanki and producers of Hollow's new video have hit back promptly at these accusations earlier this week with this innovative letter stating their case.
Having read a number of negative,pompous reviews which criticise Hollow's latest music video " The Look " for its parallels to the original video and its diverse approach to a modern music video, I as the producer and my colleague Tarun where left rather infuriated. I believe firstly it is worth stating that the success of any piece of work is not determined by its originality. And secondly significantly pointing out the inaccuracy of these claims - while our music video challenges the conventions of a modern music video its diverse approach opposes many mainstream conventions. From the get go, myself, Tarun and the band where aware that we were creating a product which was an amassing of various pre-existing alternative videos and of course the original video itself. Our widespread research enabled us to gather inspiration from a range of work the matched our genre and appealed to us as neutrals, and subsequently allow us to produce a music video which included our favourite ideas. Therefore, the coming together of our video was not accidental as we consciously researched and studied to produce a product that met our target audience's demands.
Most notably, we were influenced by Vampire Weekend and their song " A-Punk " and also of course we took influence from the original video by Metronomy, which was set in a plain white studio along with our other influences. The use of static long shots to film the location and layout of the band interested us, as it seemed to give the video a slick, professional look which corresponds with Hollows styling and image. Similarly we chose to film our video in a plain white studio, which would maintain the focus of our video on the band and the styling rather than say a picturesque setting. This was in an attempt to get an overall stylish impression and designed feeling which is what was mostly important to us. There are obvious comparisons to our music video and the other examples I have mentioned as there is a distinct symmetry in the line-up of the bands. Additionally, as a band we decided to use a deadpan facial expression to add a minimalistic feel to our video but also to enable the viewers to focus on the artists in the band which we feel was a successful part of the original video. Another result of our in depth research into all these artist that match our genre, we decided to make a performance style video. Aside from the original video and Vampire Weekends " A-Punk " we also enjoyed Peace's " Lost on me " and considered the making of these videos to be mostly down t their quirky performance style. Having said this, i do not believe that Hollow's music video can be accused of " copying " as we made the executive decision to completely strip back our video and make it very monotone giving our own stamp on a performance video. Also music videos generally only ever use one of three styles: narrative, conceptual or,performance- we were simply prompted by pre-existing bands to choose a performance style as it had been so successful.
We as a band decided to put a diverse twist on a modern music video, so we incorporated a black and white feature to our video to give the video a retro, monotone feel which we thought made the video look very effective. But of course it wasn't just an off the cuff decision, we looked in depth and it was apparent many modern day artists of all genres had given their videos this black and white feature and have turned out to be some of the worlds most popular songs, therefore as much as we "challenged" the conventions it is clear that we weren't the only ones to do so.
The Digipak and Magazine Advert that Hollow recently released reflected their music video heavily, it stuck to the minimalistic approach the video showed and also maintained the black and white theme using this as the colour pallet for both digipak and advert. As the music video was all about the band again we tried to challenge some conventions as we didn't prioritize the band on the digipak and advert so therefore was unnecessary to use photography. This stereotypically challenges mainstream Digipak and Magazine adverts conventions which normally feature imagery of the band/artist using their looks as the main selling point. Again through research it came to our attention that indie/alternative bands also detract attention away from the appearance of the band and focus more on their " Artistry ". Foals, The XX and Arctic Monkeys are all prime examples of this style of advertising.
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