“Car washes” and Lego models: 10 insanely complicated one-shot music videos - A.V. Club Denver/Boulder
Music videos have been in a state of recession for years now, as downturns in the music industry and the rise of low-cost, high-concept viral videos have supplanted the big-budget event video. But the one-shot music video has endured even as the music video has mostly outgrown its auteur phase. Because elaborate one-shots are so difficult to pull off, ambitious artists and intrepid directors are drawn to them for the visual spectacle as much as the bragging rights. Director Michel Gondry single-handedly raised the one-shot to new heights, but his ingenuity has been matched by a few artists and directors brave enough to try the most difficult trick in music video, if not all of cinema. Smashing Pumpkins, “Ava Adore” (1998, directors Dominic Hawley and Nic Goffey) The difficulties that plagued Smashing Pumpkins throughout the Adore period extended to the video for the first single, 1998’s “Ava Adore. But the directors insisted on manipulating the speed of the performance so Corgan and his bandmates would appear to speed up and slow down as Corgan’s lip synching remained static. That choice was so technically difficult for the directors to figure out, it resulted in an 11-hour delay during which more than 100 extras threatened to revolt and Corgan, a noted perfectionist, pleaded with Dom and Nic to scrap the variable... Source: www.avclub.com
