How does an indie music video stand out in today’s content crazed media landscape? Well you start with a ridiculously catchy pop masterpiece from singer/songwriter Freddy Monday; then add the visual talents of award-winning filmmaker Martin Guigui, who’s directed numerous feature films, including the 2009 Dennis Quaid thriller “Beneath The Darkness”; and finally add a timely and engaging concept of setting the video inside the live video feed of a Facebook-like social network. The result is the music video for Monday’s latest single, “Me Are You Are Me.”
Monday, the singer/songwriter, musician, producer, mixer and the founder of Endo Music, New York, a diverse group of creative content development professionals, has had his music featured in a wide array of film and television projects. Among them the ending theme song for the hit Nickelodeon animated show “The Loud House”; the 2014 Steve Jobs bio pic “Jobs,” which featured his song “There Were Times” in the film and on the soundtrack; as well as "Mall," starring Vincent D'Onofrio and Gina Gershon; HBO’s "Hello Ladies: The Movie," starring Stephen Merchant; and numerous shows on CBS, HBO, Bravo, USA, TNT, A&E, History, Sundance, TruTV, CW, NGC, TLC, Fox Sports, MTV and in Jerry Seinfeld’s web series "Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee."
For “Me Are You Are Me,” Freddy teams up with producer Jason Carmer (Third Eye Blind, Run-D.M.C) and renowned drummer Michael Urbano (Smash Mouth, Paul Westerberg, Sheryl Crow).
Currently looking to place the tune in the right project — whether film, TV or ad – Monday knew he needed a strong music video to bring the song to the attention of today’s easily-distracted online world, which is why he brought in his old friend Guigui.
“This song expresses that new relationship energy — the heightened excitement emotionally and physically,” Monday says. “Working with Martin is amazing, his passion, his ideas, I trusted his vision on this. In addition to his filmmaking expertise, Martin is also an amazing musician and composer himself, so he understood how I wanted to present this song.”
Cracking The Concept Code
For Guigui, the key to success was “cracking the code” of the song visually. “We didn’t want to make just another music video, the visuals needed to be as memorable and the song itself,” he says.
The code he cracked became the clever concept of setting the video inside the video feed of Facebook-like social media platform (humorous touches include playing with their iconic logo so it reads “freddy” rather then “facebook”).
The video opens with a beautiful blonde relaxing in a candlelit tub with a glass of wine. She reaches for her iPad, opens her social media feed and suddenly we see Freddy, guitar in hand, performing the opening chords of “Me Are You Are Me” from inside her video feed. As he performs, familiar social media graphics and iconography, such as smiley face emojis, familiar “like” thumbs-up buttons float around the screen, while a comment bar scrolls in the corner, including one comment from the girl in the tub announcing that she’s “waiting…in the bathtub.”
From there the video begins to incorporate other social media tropes such as a hand swiping to change the video, resulting in a new shot of Monday with a different instrument, or adding animated lips to his face a la Snapchat or Instagram. About mid-way through we cut to a montage or Monday and the blonde roaming the streets of Los Angeles, seemingly searching for each other. The video ends with Monday back in the video feed as an unseen hand taps the screen causing him to disappear in a puff of smoke, while an angry face emoji, a crying emoji and a final thumbs-up icon float past.
“The idea was to parody the look of social media, particularly as it relates to video,” Guigui says. “The concept works perfectly for both the spirit of the song and the times we live in today overall.”
Guigui also noted that their work, which also features the talents of Cinematographer/Editor/Visual Effects Artist Ian Fisher, was a labor of love spread out over many months, thus affording everyone involved in the creative process to experiment, consider different options and make changes that wouldn’t have been possible on a more typical music video production schedule of just a few weeks.
“Time was a creative luxury we had,” Guigui adds. “So many times you look back at a project in your career and you think ‘if I only had a few more days.’ There is none of that with this because we took our time and thought through all our creative options and made something that I think is pretty special. Freddy’s songs have a timeless quality to them and I wanted to capture that in this music video.”
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