Hasta La Ideas

George Belfield’s video for new Richard Hawley video Don’t Stare at the Sun has a very simple premise – just a series of shots of people looking away from the camera. But it’s beautiful

Apparently, Belfield, an up and coming director with Somesuch&Co, shot the video around Hawley’s home city of Sheffield using street-cast ‘ordinary people’. OK, so it’s a fairly literal-minded reference to the song title but each vignette is beautifully shot and the atmosphere created chimes perfectly with the emotions in Hawley’s music.

Earlier this year, D&AD announced that it was no longer going to run a music video category in the awards this year, leading to a good deal of soul-searching in the industry. Had standards dropped or do production companies no longer see the benefit of entering their work into D&AD?

Once, music videos were seen as the way for young filmmakers to build a career. Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Tarsem, Jonathan Glazer – they all cut their teeth in the genre before moving on to commercials and then movies. But the importance of the video in marketing music has diminished and budgets have been slashed.

But all this doesn’t necessarily mean tha standards have dropped. Belfield’s video proves that music video can still provide a worthwhile platform for filmmakers.