On Inspirations: Coldplay’s “Strawberry Swing” Music Video
When Coldplay released their music video for Strawberry Swing, it immediately became a hit. It’s the perfect mixture between the artistic creativity and the audacity to even attempt such a project (it’s all chalk) — not to mention the quality of the music (my personal favorite next to Viva la Vida) — that allowed this music video to really shine.
Reading the interview with Shynola, the creative minds behind this video, there were a few points that stood out to me. First, they acknowledged that they did not create a new technique. Rather, they looked out at the landscape of similar videos (included below), and concluded:
I don’t wish to denigrate [the others], but we thought there was more mileage in the technique than they had explored. We never claim to be original, just rigorous. So we wrote a story we thought would be entertaining and went about making it. It was a lot of hard work.
In other words, they took an existing format and pushed it to the limits. I think there are many differences between inspiration and ripping things off, and this is one of the qualities of being inspired while maintaining artistic integrity. Their desire to not create another run-of-the-mill video caused them to push the boundaries of this format:
We tried to think of all the different “camera angles” we could simulate by getting Chris lying, standing and so on. Also, we wanted to show as much interaction with the environment as possible, hence the umbrella, oar, cape etc.
I wanted to mention all this because the group that we have here, as the name implies, consists of working professionals who are also responsible for many creative aspects within Gracepoint Fellowship Church. This often means that we don’t have the time or resources to create something “never-before-seen” new. Rather, we are constantly inspired by others, and when we incorporate such ideas into ours, we try to innovate upon it, or implement it from a different angle.
Up until now, we’ve been writing about some of the neat projects and frameworks we’ve been working on. In the ensuing weeks, we’ll start posting some of the creative work that we’ve done and sharing who and what inspired such works.
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Tagged as inspiration + Categorized as Design