Alex Southam is a british director who has made success with creating videos for many artists, such as Chase & Status and Tom Odell. His big break was when he created the video for Alt J's song "Tessellate". He has worked for a range of companies such as Agile Films, who described him as: "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 walkmen, Alt+J and Lianna La Havas".
Alt J - Tessellate
His first majorly successful video was to the song "Tesselate" by Alt J. This video was hugely popular and it was a twist on the Italian Renaissance painter Raphael's 'The School of Athens, set in a modern day's gangster paradise. He had a budget of £10,000 for this video and was able to film all of the scenes that he needed in just one day. The video contained a large cast and many special effects.This video doesn't really contain a narrative; it just consists of people standing around doing nothing. Alex Southam used this technique of disjuncture between the lyrics and the visuals so that although the audience are watching the video they focus on the music. With regards to Goodwin's theory, Southam used many close ups but of the whole class not the artist. The close ups of the artist would meet the demands of the record label however the constant close ups of the whole cast may take the attention away from the artist. With regards to Laura Mulvey's theory, it could be argued that woman are the objects of male erotic desire as most of the women in this video are wearing tight clothing, or clothing that shows off their body.
Chase And Status - Lost & Not Found
Another one of his famous videos is the video for "Lost & Not Found" by Chase & Status. This video had a budget of £50,000 and was set in Los Angeles. Southam used a steadicam to film and initially filmed in 35 frames per second rather than 24. During the editing process this was slowed down. In terms of editing this video only contained three shots throughout the whole video. Alex Southam did this to try and create an early 1990s video look. In regards to Goodwin's theory, there are quite a few closeups of the cast in the video but the artist is not in the video. There is no mention of Laura Mulvey's theory as women are not the objects of erotic desire.
Style
Throughout his early career Alex wanted to create all his work himself such as editing and filming and mis en scene. He did this as he wanted to be able to take full credit for his work. Now, that he is a successful well known director he employs a director of photography in order to help him with his camera and lighting work and other professionals to help. Alex likes to explore and use techniques and methods that noone has used before. He likes to give the artist freedom and input to what the video should be like. Instead of using YouTube to show off his videos, he instead uses the website "Vimeo".
