Simple Can be Good

So I’ve recently come across the band Bombay Bicycle Club and I’ll be honest there is only one song I like by them, that being “Lights Out, Words Gone.” It just so happens that this song has a pretty grand music video to go along with it.

I love this based on two things.  Art direction and simplicity. 

The art direction goes hand in hand with the simplicity.  Each person was instructed to either wear a neutral white or black outfit, while characters of focus in the video were instructed to wear yellow, blue, or red, or at least one article of clothing hosting these colors. This creates nice complementary colors that poop throughout the video and help the eye focus.  They also stand strong against the light orange room used as the set of this video.

The simplicity of the video is really where this band succeeded though. The video has such a basic concept; get a room full of people doing a traditional dance. All this video is meant to show is people dancing to the music and enjoying themselves.  In fact, since this song is dropped over footage of some form of Latino dance gathering it almost appears any song could’ve been dropped in the background to make this footage coexist with the music.

Something else important to note is this song normally runs 5 minutes and 2 seconds and they made their music video only 3 minutes and 42 seconds.  This helps eliminate redundancy within a simple concept.  Good work Bombay Bicycle Club! Now make another song like this!