Greg Page – Page 3 – 5000 Ways to Love You

Elemeno P “Nirvana”

I like a good low-budget video. Here’s Elemeno P slowly establishing themselves as a party punk group, with their ode to Nirvana and favourite their love of music.. Original bassist Jules was making his final appearance in the band, ready to be replaced by Lani from Foamy Ed.

The video puts the band in a room divided into four parts – red, blue, green and yellow, for each of the band remembers. They are identified by Scrabble tiles spelling out their names. I bet you’re wondering, so I’ve tallied up the scores: Gibbo (10) – two more points than “Dave”, Scotty (11), Jules (12) and Justyn (16). Justyn gets lucky with both the J (8) and Y (4) in his name. The band name, which spins around on a giant turntable in the centre of the room, is worth only 12 points.

The video is directed by Greg Page, which I had suspected by the rockin’ camera work. But then this little graphic kept popping up, a “Rock-o-meter” which indicates when the band is rocking really hard. It just seems like a Greg Page kind of thing.

With the group’s previous video, “Fast Times in Tahoe” putting them in a sedate country club, this is the video that’s a chance to show the band’s ability to really rock out. You know, they can play their instruments and all. Gibbo especially goes for it, putting on an energetic display in his monochrome Union Jack jumper, singing into one of four microphones.

But what impresses me most is that the lyric “Did I ever mention you’d look wicked in my video?” is not used as a cue to put a cute girl in the video. So in a way, the listener can imagine that she (or he) is the one who would look wicked in the video. With “Nirvana”, Elemeno P established themselves as highly entertaining music dorks.

Best bit: Justyn’s mighty rock poses.

Director: Greg Page

Next… crossword cheating never pays.

Carly Binding “Alright With Me”

Having done a Geri and escaped from her girl group, Carly Binding was ready to launch herself as a serious pop singer-songwriter. This video provides a stark contrast to the garish world of TrueBliss. The bright orange power bob is gone, replaced with soft natural curls, and the scfi Lycra has been switched for natural fibres (the surprisingly enough don’t look especially out of date a decade down the line). Carly’s sitting on the back of a truck, strumming her acoustic guitar and singing the song she wrote. She’s got a one-way ticket out of Reality Popville, headed straight for Credibility Street.

“Alright With Me” was her second solo single, a pleasant enough country pop song, with a better than average chorus that saw it reach number 10 in the charts. So it’s no wonder that the video plays it very safe, going for a sweet portrayal of Carly in the great outdoors. I get the feeling this is the sort of video treatment that someone like Anika Moa might have felt uncomfortable doing, but it’s a very Carly kind of vid.

As well as sitting on the back of a ute, we also find Jaime Ridge’s future stepmum standing in a green field with a picturesque power pylon behind her, by the muddy shores of the inner Manukau harbour and sitting in the stands at a provincial sports ground. It’s establishing Carly as an ordinary Kiwi chick, the kind who is more at home with her guitar in a pair of jeans than in the orange Lycra of the TrueBliss months.

It’s a really nicely shot video, especially with the lighting of Carly against the scenic backgrounds. Given that most recent Greg Page videos have been of a darker, rockier style, it’s refreshing to see him given the opportunity to make something a bit more vanilla. Though putting a power pylon in a music video is a welcome contrast to the touristy landcapes of similar videos.

Best bit: Carly’s relentless cheer as she bumps along the potholed dirt road.

Note: A second “Alright With Me” video was made for Australia. It’s not online, but you can see a bit of it in this video.

Director: Greg Page
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next: triple word score

Betchadupa “Drop D”

While Betchadupa is experimenting with alternate guitar tunings, their video is based around a night in the life of a Betchadupa fan. We meet her in the bathroom, getting ready to get out. She puts on a tiny bit of mascara, some lippy, and heads off, with the camera seemingly attached to her, like a stalker walking backwards.

After taxiing into town, she walks down the mainstreet, eating chips. Part of me thinks, oh, a nice young lady shouldn’t eat when walking down the street, but another part of me is thinking that actually it would be quite choice to have some street chips before going to see a band.

While she’s walking to the gig, we also see Betchadupa playing. They’re also shot in the same reverse POV style (there’s probably a technical term for it). It gives the performance a sense of urgency. Every little movement is amplified, making it clear they’re playing their instruments with their whole body (even though that sounds really weird and sexual).

Once the fan arrives at the gig, the song shifts down to a slower tempo. The whole video is shot in black and white, but the concert footage is shot in a very grainy style, looking like something that’s been found decaying in a basement. Lead singer Liam is a fuzzy blur; the fan is just a head in the crowd.

It’s a nice enough video, but it feels like Betchadupa have become very comfortable with their role as a young rock band. And maybe that is a bad thing.

Best bit: the chips, in all their chiptious glory.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Director: Greg Page

Next… angry dude fest ’02.

Augustino “Captain Zero”

“Captain Zero” is an unusual song in that it’s quite good, but also not. It’s a hook-laden pop-rock number, but yet it somehow feels a bit too clean. It’s like if there was a movie about an indie rock band that had one big hit record, this would be it. And it wouldn’t quite be convincing.

The video is just as nice. The video starts with shots of the band lazing around a bar. While the song is kicking off with great energy, the band looks tired and depressed as they slouch in the bar’s booths. But as soon as the first verse begins, the band are suddenly in position with their instruments, rocking out.

The proper bandmanship continues until the chorus, a laid-back bit regarding Captain Zero himself. This sees the band return to their lazy-arsed positions, all looking fairly disappointed by this Captain Zero chap.

This alternating style continues, but as the song approaches its end, things get shaken up a little. The camera begins to wobble and go in and out of focus, as if it’s been overcome by the intensity of strange world of Captain Zero. This is a bit of a trademark of Greg Page, something that has taken on an uneasy new meaning after the earthquakes of recent years.

New video editing technology is put to use with a filter that keeps only red colours, rendering everything else in black and white. Now it’s the sort of thing you could now do with an iPhone app, but back in 2002 it was a cool new thing.

Maybe I’m inflicting really high standards on Augustino based on their previously brilliant videos and songs. “Captain Zero” is a good video and a good song, but it just feels like there’s something missing.

Best bit: the serious jacket pocket zip-up.

Director: Greg Page
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… pirate radio.

Betchadupa “Supa Day”

The more mature sounding Betchadupa have the second single off their second album “The Alphabetchadupa” and another video directed by Greg Page. It has a strong guitar pop sound with crunchy garage tones. I like a good crunchy garage.

The video sees the ‘Dupa performing in front of a wall painted in vertical green-grey stripes, looking like a depressed test pattern. There are points of brighter colour from the band – Liam’s maroon trousers, Matt’s red t-shirt, Chris’ red guitar, and the orange Orange amp. With the band neatly arranged along the stage and the camera mainly shooting straight on, it’s a very pleasing rock tableau.

As the band power through their pop pleaser, there’s plenty of rock posing. And this is where the video gets a little interesting. Suddenly part of the screen will freeze. Chris will strike a particularly epic rock pose and he’s paused like that, leaving the rest of the band to play on. I’m guessing the striped background was necessitated by the need to have places to disguise the border of the frozen video. Or Liam and Joe make epic leaps while Joe and Matt coolly play on.

Capturing a band’s live energy is something that Greg Page does really well, but there’s something missing here. Maybe it’s Betchadupa themselves. They seem to be playing their instruments with the energy and concentration of someone having a gym workout. That’s all good, but where is the fun?

Note: below is lower quality but embeddable version of the video, but for a higher quality version, visit Greg Page’s director portfolio at Fish ‘n’ Clips.

Best bit: the brief close-up of the Batman badge on Liam’s guitar strap.

Diretor: Greg Page
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… nursing a beer.

The D4 “Exit to the City”

Putting a band in a car is a pretty ordinary music video trick, but with “Exit to the City”, Greg Page takes things to a whole nother level, mercilessly shoving the D4 into the back of a van.

For a start there’s no green screen or trailer involved. It’s a real van driving through the streets of Auckland. And there’s no attempt to romanticise it as a road trip. There’s the band hunched over in the van, attempting to play the song while they’re hurled about as the vans takes corners. The outside – fairly ordinary looking streets of suburban Auckland – passively passes by the background windscreen.

The van is covered with egg cartons, presumedly to offer a bit of padding as the group is bumped around. But the pulpy protection starts to fall off, with large bits of the van’s bare metal interior exposed in some shots. This band suffers for their art.

The video is amusing, but it never goes for gags, rather letting the focus be the physical comedy of a band desperately trying to stay upright and rock out in a moving vehicle.

As well as the driver and the band, Greg Page is the sixth person in the band, crouched down below the camera, with his hand popping up to adjust a rogue microphone stand, hold up a pedal and finish with an “APPLAUSE” sign. I’m going to randomly declare this to be the most legendary of Greg Page’s videos.

Best bit: the disappearing and reappearing album cover.

Director: Greg Page
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a space odyssey.

PanAm “Long Grass”

PanAm were an Auckland four-piece Flying Nun band, going for a noisy punk-pop sound. “Long Grass” was directed by Greg Page and uses puppets to depict the band. They’re a bit like three-dimensional versions of Terrance and Phillip from “South Park”, with big flappy mouths. The inside of their mouths even look a bit like half a 45, but upon closer examination, it’s just a black semi-circle with a red bit in the middle.

The band are playing in front of an aeroplane, with a glittery “PanAm” logo (which, I assume for legal reasons, is enough from the airline Pan Am). They’re wearing black turtleneck tops with the initials of their names on it, jeans and sneakers – all made with just enough detail to look as authentic as puppet clothes can.

We also see the trio dressed in cammo gear and military helmets, looking like they’d gone and formed a puppet junta. It gives the video a slightly dangerous edge, especially coming so soon after 9/11. Perhaps the puppet PanAm hijacked the aeroplane just so they could use it in their music video. Yeah, that’d be it.

But this time, most of Greg Page’s music video were live action, so it’s cool that he’s had the opportunity to go back to his non-human video roots. Only with a significantly bigger budget than his Hamilton student video days, “Long Grass” is a slicker production.

For PanAm’s debut, it’s a bold choice to not feature the band in the video. But the video turned out to be well liked, scoring nominations for the Juice TV Awards and the Squeeze People Choice Awards in 2002.

Update: Songlines Across New Zealand talked to Paul from the band about the music video. He revealed that the band themselves were operating the puppets. And the puppets and set were all designed by Greg Page.

Best bit: the little kazoo toot mouthed by puppet Paul.

Director: Greg Page

Next… post-apocalyptic dub.

Betchadupa “Sleepy News”

“Sleepy News” was the first single off Betchadupa’s second album “The Alphabetchadupa”. It’s also notable as being the first appearance of Liam Finn’s beard, Che Guevara-style wisps that gave little hint of the bushy Department-of-Conversation-worker-style facial hair he was to sport in later years.

Director Greg Page has fun with the old “torture the band” format. Shot in bold black and white, the video begins with Liam alone in a grimy room, playing his guitar while standing on tiptoes. It turns out Liam is attached to a wire harness which is slightly pulling him off the ground. And it surely means we’re going to get some Peter Pan antics later.

We also see Liam and the rest of the band in the same room, only this time they’re being drenched in water. And interestingly enough, all the guitars are shown as being plugged in. When Liam sings, “I’m dead and you killed me,” perhaps he’s refering to a mass electricution. Everyone knows that electricty and water don’t mix.

Solo Liam also gets to go for a bit of a twirl on his harness. The room is dimly lit and other members of the band wander over in ghostly layers and muck around while Liam spins.

“Sleepy News” is a fierce song – tense and grungy. The video adds to that and captures their performance energy. And who doesn’t love a good wet hair flick?

Best bit: Liam’s hat, boringly obeying the laws of gravity.

There’s no embeddable version of the video, but you can watch a good quality version over at Greg Page’s director portfolio at Fish ‘n’ Clips.

Director: Greg Page
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… left or right?

The D4 “Heartbreaker”

I found this video uploaded to YouTube by a Japanese fan. “It is a band of best for me,” part of the description reads, as awkwardly translated by Google. And indeed the D4 were a band of best for many Japanese, enjoying some success there.

But the video for “Heartbreaker” is an Auckland production, directed by previous D4 video-maker Greg Page. The video begin by introducing us to a couple of saucy leather-clad rockabilly vixens, hanging out in an old yard, as such video characters do. They’re shot in grainy black and white, which slightly mythologises this intriguing pair.

We also meet the D4 indoors, playing in a grimy room with walls streaked in (artfully applied) grey paint. It’s hot in colour but with a very minimal palette, as if the bad girls have sucked all the energy from their lives. The song is tense and serious and the video focuses on those aspects. The band is relatively restrained, and even the massive rock-out at the end is more conservative than what they’ve previously done.

There’s a bit of fun with camera movement. As well as the camera doing typically pervy pans over the women, it jumps and skips over the band, as if it’s not quite sure what to make of these guys. They’re hurtin’ – don’t want to get too close.

The video ends with the two bad girls strolling over the Haslett Street-Waima Street motorway overbridge (also seen in Pluto’s “Bananas in the Mist” video from the same funding round).

There’s something very pleasing about this video. It’s relatively low budget, a simple concept but it looks really good. It’s just about making a music video that promotes the single, so that fans in Japan can enjoy a bit of the D4 as much as fans in New Zealand.

Best bit: the attention given to Jimmy’s isolated, one-word backing vocal performance of “cheatin'”.

Director: Greg Page
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a one-man show.

Eye TV “Worse For Wear”

It’s Eye TV’s final NZ On Air-funded video. They had 15 funded videos, which puts them on par with Garageland and Tadpole. It’s kind of nice that their final video was directed by Greg Page, whose music-video-directing career developed alongside Eye TV’s music career.

Greg previously directed “One Day Ahead” for the band, a stylish performance-based video. He takes a different tack with “Worse For Wear” going back to his roots in animation. He’d previously done claymation music videos (Shihad’s “Yr Head is a Rock”, Throw’s “Honeyblonde”), but those were done with a dash of humour.

“Worse For Wear” has the darker side of Greg’s creative vision, previously seen in the gothic mad-scientistic story in Throw’s “All Different Things”. It tells the story of a lowly cleaner (who works for the Worse For Wear cleaning company). In fact, with a title card reading “The Cleaner”, the narrative-heavy music video also effectively works as a short film.

It’s a scribbly grey world, with the animation done as simple black pen drawings on cardboard cut-outs, with slightly more detailed cityscapes and backgrounds. Wielding his mop like a paintbrush, Clive the cleaner gets to work on the murky grey walls, but they seem to dirty themselves almost as quickly as he can clean them.

Finally he gets the wall clean and it glistens with pristine whiteness. But now that everything is clean, what will Clive do for work? He cries dark grey tears and the teardrops plop on the floor and soon turn everything else grey. “All is well” appears on the wall. Clive leaves, content in the knowledge that there’ll be more work for him tomorrow.

“Worse For Wear” is a sweet, uplifting song but the lyrics are specifically a man addressing a messed-up woman. The video sticks with the same theme but moves it to the far more interesting scenario of Clive the cleaner and his tears of eternal employment.

Best bit: Clive’s work ID card – his ticket to happiness.

Next… bonus power round.