For years, Singapore has boasted many fine bands but always appeared a little light on singer-songwriters. But of late, thankfully, that has changed. Two promising S-ROCK singer-songwriters have each released new music videos recently and in this special PoPTV segment, Julian Kwok and Jeremy Soh share insights into their new music videos.
Julian Kwok – Hoax
Why?
Hoax is a song about not taking things at face value. The song was chosen for the Noise music video showcase mainly because Big Three Productions believed they could work best with it (among my other compositions), in terms of experimenting with different ideas, exploring a variety of visual concepts and having fun with the whole process. The song also has a strong message to youths – to always discern for oneself and to distill the real from the fake, and in so doing to strip away from all pretences and false identities which we often adopt when living out the expectations of society. The song is a reminder for one to stay true to his/her self.
How?
Big Three came up with the concept to showcase a variety of (exaggerated/”fake”) characters from various walks of life (which represent the “hoaxes”) amidst the character of Julian playing the guitar and singing with no frills (representing my true self), to create a sense of confusion (a theme that the song alludes to), until it comes to a point when the clown character wipes off his makeup (representing a shedding of falsities) and culminates into a final shot of Julian by himself at the end of the video (representing the true self). The shooting took place indoors behind a green screen at Camwerkz Studio in Commonwealth where, under the direction of Shaun Koh, Big Three’s Manager, I was made up for the various characters, namely as a coffeeshop ‘ah peh’, an ‘Ah Beng’, an emo punk musician, an extreme rocker, a geek/nerd, a clown and myself. I was made to role play and to sing the whole song while in character for each of the personas. Not more than two takes were allocated to each character. Thereafter, the team of editors from Big Three did their magic and brought the characters all together, either appearing one after another in various shots or together in a single frame throughout the song. The shooting process was thoroughly enjoyable and I hope to have many more of such opportunities in the future.”
Jeremy Soh – Empty
(Comments by Director SHIAN WEN)
Why?
I decided to do this song for a music video as it appealed to me both musically and conceptually. The song speaks a lot on how many of us have at one point of another wondered if there is more reason and meaning to our life then just passing our days one at a time and I related to that.
Additionally, the song also gave significant space for interpretation, and hence a lot of latitude for experimentation. As opposed to doing a music video simply to accompany the song, I decided that Empty was a good song from which one could also tell a powerful visual narrative to complement the song.
At the end of the day, the music video presents the idea that letting others into our lives can make it a lot less Empty. Nobody is an island.
How?
The music video was shot in two days with an additional day being used for pickup shoots. The concept of the music video, which involved a split screen telling two stories that are interwoven at certain points eventually coming together at the end meant that we were in fact shooting two music videos at the same time.
Despite having limited time and resources, the production team worked hard in achieving some rather ambitious shots such as the destruction of a room which would be reversed in post production, making it come together, as well as working through outdoor shoots in remote location with limited manpower, having to brave bad weather for most of the outdoor shoots as well.
The music video was shot on the Canon H1 HD camera and edited in Apple Final Cut Pro.
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