Case Study 3.

Alex Southam.

Alex Southam also freelances for OB Management. He trained as a lawyer but decided to go in a new direction and work in the film industry. He began making music videos to learn 'the trade.' He has worked for Agile Films who describe him on their website:

'Alex Southam is an exciting new talent, working in a dizzying variety of styles across live action and animation. Entirely self-taught, his inventiveness and creativity have caught the eye with a series of diverse promos for the likes of the Walkman, Alt+J and Lianne La Havas. Alex joined Agile in August 2012'

To begin with Southam undertook all the tasks on his videos:

• Camera
• Lighting 
• Editing 
• Now uses a Director of Photography

Southam likes the format of music videos as, 'you can try new techniques and can have real artistic freedom.' He is less keen on commercials as they allow for 'much less freedom.' He uses Vimeo to showcase his video - this is becoming an increasingly important platform as it is considered to have 'higher status' than YouTube.

His breakthrough with the video Tesselate for Alt J. The budget was £10,000 and it was a 1 day shoot. There was a large cast and he used Special Effects with After Effects.

He also directed the video 'Lost and Not Found' for Chase and Status. This had a £50,000 budget and filmed in Los Angeles. He used a steadicam, filming at 36 frames per second and then slowed it down. This is a lot higher than the usual 24 frames per second. He also used only three shots in the whole video.



He went for an early 1990s VHS video look and was influenced by Massive Attack's 'Unfinished Sympathy'.