Liquid in Music Video

While looking around on the world wide web, I've found a fair few music videos with some rather artistic uses of liquid... If mastered, it looks like it could be quite a useful technique.

Funeral For A Friend - Into Oblivion



In this video, which is a wholly perfomance based offering from Welsh post-hardcore band Funeral For A Friend, we see the band performing in front of a screen, showing various freak weather conditions. As the video goes on, rain starts to fall, and the images of the back screen and the rain start to merge, as though the band were immersed in an electrical storm. This provides a memorable chaotic image and makes the perfomance, which would be tame alone, all the more exciting.


Foo Fighters - The Pretender




This video uses liquid in a different but equally exciting way, combining concept with performance. The video begins with an empassioned performance by Dave Grohl and the rest of the Foo Fighters. As the performance continues, riot police gradually appear at the venue. As their numbers swell and the performance continues, the police begin to charge at the Foo Fighters. Suddenly the inconspicuous red background explodes, sending a cascade of liquid at the riot officers, halting their charge. This creates a beautiful visual effect of the liquid crashing forth, obscuring the performance. All in all, it's a highly memorable visual hook, that comes completely out of the blue.





Here's a great making of video showing how the video was set up. Unfortunately it doesnt give any clues to the logistical methods they used, but serves as a lovely compliment to the piece. It all looks very familiar and it's eye-opening seeing the process is almost the same when done professionally.




Paramore - Pressure



Here's the video for Pressure by Paramore. It too has a novel use of liquid, at 2.30 into the song, the music quickens and a valve is pulled which releases all the water built up in the water pipes surrounding the band onto the performance. At the same time the sprinkler system engages in the narrative sequence, leaving the main boy and girl character to be reunited. The performance really changes and the band are given a chance to really 'rock out' and have fun with the water... It must have been very fun to film!

All in all, the use of liquid may be a bit ambitious for our own use, but it's nice to dream. We could possibly impliment some of the more basic effects into our own video however, as the visual effects created truly are stunning.