Sometimes, Simple Is King

I caught this video again the other day.  I hadn't seen it for a while and it made me smile as much as the first time I watched it last year.  And as soon as it finished I watched the whole thing through again.  Twice.  That's no mean feat for me given my wandering magpie mind and poor attention span.

It got me thinking about the beautiful simplicity of the craft behind it and the confidence of the Black Keys in running with something that is so stripped back [apparently, the record company weren't keen when they first clocked it].

I reckon that agencies could learn a lot from this approach.

These days there seems to be a tendency for creatives to want to showboat their cleverness on everything they do.  To chase the latest technique.  To covet the "original" and the "different for the sake of it" over an idea where the quality of the execution does the talking.

Sometimes, it's the role of a creative to actually get out of the way of the idea and keep things simple.  The great leap can often be taken at the pre-production stage. The lion's share of the energy and focus can then be put into bringing the idea to life in the best possible manner.

I imagine that on a piece of paper, the idea behind this video could seem pedestrian and derivative.

At face value, the concept of getting an interesting character who isn't in the band to lip sync their way through a song isn't new.  And the technique of doing it all in one take has been done plenty of times before.  Retro, low-fi look and feel? Well, that's familiar too.

But none of this matters a jot.

The brilliance of the casting and performance is everything here.

And sometimes that's all you need for a great idea to really fly.