Practitioner One – Folkert Verdoorn

https://vimeo.com/user25798783

Using Vimeo, search for favoured music videos, I came across the Director Folkert Verdoorn, based in Amsterdam; his music video Loving Love had caught my eye. I have chosen to focus attention onto Verdoorn as I am intrigued into finding out more about the director and what filming features he uses to I am able to apply the research to my own video.

My source Patta (website), tells me the video was made for an 18-year -old singer/ songwriter who is also from the Netherlands. Verdoorn, is a freelance director with a wide portfolio of music videos for various artists that tell a story. Verdoorn’s online presence isn’t very vivid other than Vimeo, IMDB etc; As secondary research I wasn’t able to find much about the director, other than watch his videos, and read the few reviews on comments and blogs. However, on his Vimeo account he provides a contact email; I am currently having an conversation with him via email towards help of primary research.

Loving Love, captured me through the visuals. The hues synergy of red, used through out the video creates a retro and warm feel for the audience,

which is similar to what I hope to apply to my music video. The colour red also expresses love, which focuses on the narrative of the song. As a spectator for Loving Love, this style made me feel more engrossed in the story, the character’s and the emotions seeping through the screen. The video uses a lot of hand-held camera movement, moving towards to the focal point – which is a technique I wish to apply to my own video. When the camera moves to the elderly man (as picture above), I felt connected to the deep, depressing emotions the facial expression was giving the audience. With the surrounding features to the shot, such as the colouring and dull depth of field; all attention is drawn to the actors facial expression, which is a technique I admire of Verdoorn’s.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much online that I am able to read about the music video. Their isn’t any sites that have written an article nor does either of the artists (Verdoorn & Naaz), have their own site I can look into. Although, I managed to find Naaz’s Twitter account where she shared some information about the video. She had tweeted about the quick popularity of the video and how it hit 10,000 views within just days. The tweet thanks her spectator for the attention, and expresses her excitement for the sudden stats. Also, using Vimeo and YouTube I was able to read spectator’s comments on the video and what they

thought about it. Although there are no top comments about the making of the video or about any of the technical makings; many of the spectators stated that they loved the video and the narrative of the music video.

As an overall review for me, I feel that the video is very artistic in the way the narrative is told; with a random selection of shots and different characters, representing the different love stories for different people. I feel that it succeeds in getting the message of love across. It shows how love affects us all in different ways and people love different people/ things. I find that the styles and methods used in the making of the video such as the cinematography and hues, all work together to create a strong visual appeal for the spectator; and creates a calm mellow emotion, to draw in the attention to the story.