Case study 3 - Alex Southam

Alex Southam was trained to be a lawyer but then he decided to join the film world and began by making music videos to learn the trade. Alex has worked for Agile Films and on their website they have described him as:
'Alex Southam is an exciting new talent, working in dizzying variety of styles across live action and animation. Entirely self-taught, his inventiveness and creativity have caught the eye with a series of diverse promos for the likes of the Walkmen, Alt+J and Lianne La Havas. Alex joined Agile in August 2012'

Alex Southam undertook all the tasks in his videos, such as; Camera, Lighting, Editing and now he uses a Director of Photography. He likes the format of music videos as there are new techniques to try and you can have a real artistic freedom. He doesn't like commercials very much as there is less freedom. Southam uses Vimeo to showcase his videos and this is becoming an increasingly important platform as it is considered to have higher status than YouTube.

His video called Tesselate which was made for Alt J has a budget of £10,000 and was shot in 1 day. The video had a large cast and they had to use special effects and they used After Effects.



Another one of his videos is Lost and found by Chase & Status and it has a budget of £50,000 which shows that it is a better quality than Tesselate. This video was filmed in Los Angeles and it was shot on a steadicam, in 36 frames per second and then slowed down for a better effect. He was inspired by Massive Attacks - Unfinished Sympathy which is shot in one shot but Alex could not do that and ended up having 3 cuts that are not noticeable.




Alex Southam also has his own website where you can see all his videos and also find out any information about him. He also has a Vimeo which he feels like it has higher status than YouTube therefore he started sharing his work on it.