Get Your Music Video Popping

Music videos are primarily intended to promote songs, connect artists to their fans as well as promote artists’ brands.

Over the years, Namibian music video directors have done an impeccable job of this by directing music videos that have appealed to continental music channels and have garnered thousands of views online.

This week, spoke to some of Namibia’s top music video directors on the art of shooting videos and all the elements that go into making a video that is creative and visually appealing.

Speaking on how music videos are perceived by music fans in Namibia, filmmaker Undjee Zaire, commonly known as Reggie, from Reggie Films says there is a lot of engagement, especially with the younger generation with mobile devices and access to the internet. Zaire mentioned that artists have embraced the internet and many no longer depend on television channels to air their music videos.

“There are a lot of artists I work with who have not even taken their music videos to television channels but the videos still manage to get over 20 000 views on YouTube,” said Zaire.

When shooting music videos, he likes coming up with a concept himself. He explained that as a videographer, he prefers this approach because he knows what he can do with any budget. “Untrained artists with less experience when it comes to shooting music videos normally come with less money and think that it is sufficient to execute their ideas. This is why I prefer coming up with the concept but I am also OK with the artist coming to me with a concept already,” said Zaire. His philosophy is to create something that looks worth more than what the artist paid.

He pointed out LMPC’s ‘Control’ and Sally Boss Madam’s ‘What You Say’ as his favourite productions thus far because of the cinematography and the intense planning that went into them. Both these music videos have received overwhelming praise for their art direction and aesthetic style.

“For LMPC’s ‘Control’, no scene is repeated and there are daring scenes where we challenged ourselves and I am happy it all came together perfectly. Sally Boss Madam’s ‘What You Say’ is simply a beautiful video. A lot of people find it hard to believe me when I say that music video was not worth more than N$10 000,” he said.

Edward Osman from Basement Films says the quality of music videos in Namibia is getting better, however there is still room for improvement. “There are artists and music video directors who are really putting in effort in terms of coming up with good quality music videos, so much so that big music channels like Trace Africa air these videos, but we still need to do more.

We cannot only have six Namibian music videos playing on Trace Africa when there are a lot artists shooting music videos every day,” said Osman.

He pointed out the lack of indoor facilities as a major setback for videographers and musicians in Namibia. “Many times we do not have proper venues to shoot from so we resort to shooting in the streets. We can turn Ramatex into our Hollywood and shoot all our indoor videos in that facility,” suggested Osman.

Osman shared that to improve the standard of Namibian music videos, video directors and musicians need to improve their script writing. “We used to struggle because we did not have good equipment but that is no longer the case. The biggest drawback in this industry right now is that the scripts are not fascinating enough to make the videos interesting.

But I applaud those who are doing an incredible job in this regard,” said Osman.

Karasa from the NAMA-nominated Afro-pop trio TKB says that when it comes to storylines in music videos, their aim is to empower young people and they ensure the content is appropriate for both young and old people. “Our songs and music videos are based on what happens in people’s daily lives,” said Karasa.

TKB are some of the Namibian musicians who have had their music videos aired on Trace Africa.

Himba Boi, whose music video for ‘Punde’ was first premiered on MTV Base (Africa), said Namibian music video directors are doing a good job by telling Namibian stories through music videos. Moreover, he said that Namibian video directors should take pride in showing the world how beautiful the Namibian landscape and culture is. “It is easy to identify a Nigerian music video so it should be the same for Namibian music videos as well,” he said.

“Videographers should also be consistent and not compromise on quality. You get video directors who are known for shooting high quality music videos but they lower their quality for certain artists and budgets.

This tendency does not reflect well on the videographer.”

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