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et’s start with a simple question. On any given d
ay, would you be more likely to click into a video or Soundcloud embed? No prizes for guessing the right answer. We are inherently drawn to visual stimulus as a species. That’s why musicians put so much stock into their music videos. They offer a precious pathway for their music to reach new and often unexpected audiences. Here enters the role of the video director and there are few, if any, art forms as multi-faceted as crafting music videos. The medium, still relatively in its infancy, is both a solo and collaborative process. It demands an artist with a distinctive vision and selflessness to meld it with the musician’s preconceptions. Empathy is necessary, maybe above all. Connecting definitive motion to the seemingly endless possible interpretations of a song demands that a director really place themselves into their musical counterpart’s mindset. To draw out the most compelling visual, a director must comprehensively understand the emotional spectrum which underlies a particular song. The rise of YouTube, from 2005 onwards, offered directors and musicians the ability to upload directly to an audience of millions - free of the precocious grip of studios and TV stations. If video killed the radio star, YouTube made music television utterly redundant. We as a nation, are blessed with a current and emerging generation of music video directors with an eye for the medium. We’ve selected five from the current crop who excite us but there are many, many, more; Brendan Canty, Albert Hooi, Aoife McArdle and Myles O’Reilly to name just a few whose work deserves attention and praise. Irish music has had its fair share of iconic high-budget, label sponsored, videos. Bono parading around Stephen’s Green in a horsedrawn carriage *sigh* with the whole damn marching band in tow comes to mind. However, most of the best modern Irish music videos, and their directors, have excelled in an independent, low-budget work environment. That’s why, in the summer of 2015, whispers of a design student who moonlit as a hip-hop artist were rampant in the city. At the very dawning of what would be Irish hip-hop’s ascent to the cultural zeitgeist it is today, people from all sects talked about the young MC who’d nearly drowned himself in the pursuit of the perfect underwater rendition of his new single. People talked about Midnight Flower because it captured the imagination of everyone who saw it. It was and still remains, a powerful image. One of an artist literally willing to die for his craft. What did it cost Kojaque? Nothing but the time he spent practicing holding his breath in the weeks leading up to the shoot, and the potential to burst a valuable lung. For his efforts, Midnight Flower has nearly 500,000 plays on YouTube. This aims to get a sense of the creative drive Tara O’Callaghanon on shoot for Hovay’s Karma involved in directing superb music videos. We met and profiled five creatives who have all, in their own way, veered off the prescribed path for filmmakers, in the process creating some of the finest art the nation has produced since the turn of the century. 23