Case Study 3: Alex Southam

Introducing Alex Southam

Alex Southam is described as "an exciting new talent," and is "self taught." He has worked with a "dizzying variety of styles," including he famous website, Live Nation and Animation. He has a creative stance when it comes to approaching he music industry. Southam worked on various promos, with the likes of the Walkmen, Alt+J and Lianne La Havas. By August 20112, Alex joined Agile.

In his videos, he wants to take control. He undertook working with the camera, lighting and editing. Now, he us currently the director of Photography. Clearly, he is a dedicated worker who loves, and enjoys thoroughly what he does. His creativity and dedication has lead him to craft exquisite music videos. He combines photography and interesting narratives to captivate the audience in an exciting way.

His standards are definately set high for future projects with Laura Mvula, and the up and coming Tom Odell.

The essence of his videos stems from a sense of "artistic freedom," and not limit oneself by exploring "new techniques." Commercials limit this sense of freedom for him, he wants opportunities to be boundless. Southam takes advantage of Vimeo by showcasing his videos on the website, open for everyone to access. It has become a tool as a form of advertisement for himself, and is catching up to YouTube.

His final breakthrough stems from the video Tessellate for Alt J - the budget was £10,000 and only had a day to shoot. There was a large cast, meaning there was a number of extras. AfterEffects was used for the special effects.

I interpret the song “Tessellation,” as a form of repetition. A tessellation is created by repetition, which can be seen as a symbolic image. There a three main groups of people who repeat the same patterns in the video. The lyrics states “triangle are my favourite shape, three points where two lines meet.” Perhaps the singer is content in consistency, and routine. That’s how he feels safe, in steadiness and stability. The cast are stood in front of a green screen. Southam used long continuous shots using Steadicam to emphasise the fluidity, breaking the shots would possibly break the symbolic meaning of the song. In order to understand why Southam has used this shot, you have to understand the general meaning of the song by the definition of Tessellation. The video is rather vague, which allows the audience to have their own interpretation of the song, however, keeping in mind the meaning of the song title.

Southam worked in Los Angeles on Chase & Status’ "Lost and Not Found", with a higher budget than Alt J - £50,000. It was filmed using a Steadicam, filming at 36 frames per second then was later slowed down through the editing. The idea of taking the video in one long take was influenced by Massive Attack’s “Unfinished Sympathy.” In the whole video, there is only three shots, which helps the idea of “fading away,” – underlining the lucid, and transcendent theme. The singer is observing everything in a dream like way.