One Shot Wonders

An interesting example of how a one shot wonder video can be used, is Coldplay's 2000 hit, Yellow. The song is known for its emotion and rawness, with it still being considered amongst the best songs the band has made, even though the continuously produce hit after hit. The video has an extremely basic concept, relying on Chris Martin's performance as the vocalist to portray the song's obvious emotion. He does it extremely well, performing as if he is in the moment, rather than making a music video, creating an incredibly personal visual, which reflects the brilliant song. Coldplay themselves came up with the idea, firstly wanting all the members of the band to walk down the beach to a sunny backdrop. However, due to one of the band members having to attend a close family member's funeral on the day of the shoot, it was decided that Chris Martin should be the only one to feature, with the circumstances also reflecting Martin's mood. Due to the video being in slow motion, Chris Martin had to sing the song at double speed so that the audio and visual content would be in sync, a common yet difficult practice of music videos. A wonderful video to reflect a wonderful song.




Another example of the format being incorporated in to a music video is the visual for 'Wannabe' by The Spice Girls. It is certainly more chaotic than the Coldplay song I mentioned above, depicting the five different characters of each girl in an abnormal situation, trying to catch the 'madness of the Spice Girls'. The video was a first for director Jhoan Camitz, with his only other experience being TV commercials for companies such as Diesel and Nike. His concept for the video was the girls taking over the building, and running a riot— reflecting the same thing they did when they were looking for a manager and a record company. Because the video needed to be taken in one shot, the group rehearsed the routine several times through the night, while a steadycam operator followed them. The video won Best Dance Video at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards, and Best Video at the 1997 Comet Media Awards. It was also nominated for Best British Video at the 1997 BRIT Awards,and was ranked at number 41 in the Top 100 Pop Videos of all time by Channel 4.




An example of the style being used in a different genre, Hip Hop, can be found here. This is an interesting, due to Hip-Hop being conventionally associated with a bravado type video, not the minimalism that a one shot wonder brings.