Best Music Vids - The Smashing Pumpkins.
As a big Smashing Pumpkins fan, I am very familiar with most of their music videos. There are a couple of different ones which stand out for me (‘Disarm’, ‘Tonight, Tonight’, ‘Stand inside Your Love’ and ‘33’), but my absolute favourite is ‘Ava Adore’. I have to choose that one just because it is so damned clever.
Filming an entire music video in one camera shot has been done a few times before. However, I don’t think that any of them have had so much going on in them as well. ‘Ava Adore’ has to be seen several times before you even manage to take it all in. The background, foreground and in-between are all full of so many different things. Basically, ‘Ava Adore’ has the content of ten ‘normal’ music videos crammed into it.
Billy Corgan must have had an enormous amount of fun making this. He certainly looks as happy as a pig in muck dressed in his ‘Nosferatu’-styled get-up. But the thing is; it really, really suits him. God, if he had ever been cast as a vampire he’d have put Christopher Lee out of a job! He is genuinely creepy and the way he moves is perfect for the video. It is a strange mixture of sinuous, sinister and sexy…
There is some extremely clever trick photography in this video. The best part is probably when Billy Corgan shoots across the screen at an impossibly high speed. In fact, this still manages to make me jump, even though I’ve watched it a hundred times before. It’s weird, it’s freaky, it’s fun!
The whole thing is rich with symbolism and a lot of thought has gone into every frame. It’s the kind of video that will stick in your mind just because it is so very unusual.
And to end, if any of you are eager to know, check out the new photos that just went up for banner stands. That was my trained hand at photo editing!