Kodak Music Clip Awards Announced

Kodak Music Clip Awards Announced

- Tightrope walker leaves Judges spellbound at the Kodak Music Clip Awards -

The country's most talented music video makers gathered at Wellington's Bar Bodega on Sunday for this year's Kodak Music Clip Awards.

The level of competition was intense this year with a record number of entries.

Accepting the challenge of judging all 91 videos was music and film critic Nick Bollinger, director Peter Burger and musician, composer and performer Michelle Scullion.

The diversity of their backgrounds provided the perfect blend of perspectives required to judge each entry for the six Award categories. Best Director, Best Director - Runner Up, Best Director of Photography, Best Editor, Special Commendation for Animation and The Knack Award.

Judge Nick Bollinger said "The sheer quantity of the entries was a challenge in itself. But the biggest challenge was after selecting our finalists we still had 29 really good videos to choose from. Overall though the winning entries stood out above the rest and were ones that we all voluntarily rewound and watched again and again.”

The clear winner of the Best Director Award was Edward Davis for "Don't" by Gramsci with Anika Moa.

The video was inspired by an idea by Paul McLaney, aka Gramsci, and featured a man holding a rope leading off into the sky, on which a woman is doing a tightrope-walking act.

Enlisting the help of friend and physical theatre choreographer, France Herve, Davis created a surreal collage of reality and fairytale-like animation. "While France mimed the tightrope routine on the floor, I filmed the video in one continuous shot, walking all around her, then up a stairway to a catwalk above" explained Davis.

Using "after-effects trickery" Davis then replaced the background with images of locations from around the country including aerials and city-scapes of Wellington, views of Mt Ngauruhoe and freshly cleared native bush from the West Coast.

Davis had specifically completed the video in time to enter it into the Kodak Music Clip Awards, so was delighted with the win. With a passion for creating ambient films, he hopes to continue exploring the boundaries of music video making.

The Best Director Runner Up Award, was taken away by last year's overall winner, Joe Lonie for "Green" by Goodshirt. James Anderson won Best Editor for "Verbally Decapitating" by DJ Logikal.

Crighton Bone won Best Director of Photography for "Watching You" by lll Semantics, while Paul Herschell took away the Special Commendation for Animation for "Bee-Bo" by Audio Sauce.

The Knack Award, for achieving outstanding results with a low budget, was taken away by Richard Bell for the video "Let me die a woman" by Phoenix Foundation. What the video lacked in budget, was made up for in quality and ingenuity. It's not surprising Bell has developed a "knack" for making great videos, with over 16 years experience he's produced music videos for bands such as Nirvana, U2, and Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Unfortunately, Bell wasn't able to attend the Awards as he is currently filming in New York on his next project.

Prizes for each category were generously donated by the New Zealand film industry, with each winner taking away between three and five thousand dollars of film products, developing and post-production services.

Run in conjunction with the 16th Wellington Fringe Film Festival, the Kodak Music Clip Awards wouldn't have been possible without the considerable support received from the New Zealand Film industry.

This year's Festival is proudly sponsored by Creative New Zealand, the New Zealand Film Commission, Wellington City Council, Kodak and Channel Z.

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