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Music Video Award sponsored by YouTube

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The Music Video Award is sponsored by YouTube

Launched in May 2005, YouTube’s mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world. We believe that everyone deserves to have a voice, and that the world is a better place when we listen, share and build community through our stories. YouTube is a Google company.

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For an outstanding music video by an artist or group involved in a Youth Music-funded project.

*Voting for this category is now closed*

My One

By Artist: EVA

Project: AudioActive, Youth Music NextGen Fund, South East

The song's main lyric triggered an association with golfing, linking to 'hole in one'. EVA suggested a sample of an ASMR golf swing to layer the syncopated snare, adding an animated feel to the track. She had some quick convenient context for the plot of the verses and hey presto! EVA is a big fan of satire and caricature, so decided to do a whole golf themed music video. The song is playful, using Jersey Club with Drum and Bass elements.
EVA says: "This was the most difficult video I have produced due to all the different locations plus shooting outdoors where weather comes into play. I used 4 locations, my local athletics stadium where I had my secondary school sports day, Bottega rooms with Audio Active, East Brighton golf club and Queen’s Park tennis courts."
A live version of the track was used to enter the Glastonbury Emerging Talent competition and the video premiered in Wonderland magazine.

Goodnight

By Artist: George Bloomfield

Project: Music:Leeds, Yorkshire & The Humber

The music video was inspired by psychedelic animated videos from the likes of Andy Shauf and Tame Impala. Made in true DIY style, George used £5 worth of books from the charity shop, a free stop-motion app on his phone, collating over 2,500 photos.
George says: "The song 'Goodnight' is my exploration of grief a few years down the line, depicting the moment before sleep where I often reconnect with my best friend who we lost in an accident. With day-to-day life being so busy, this time is a nice moment to recall countless memories in my head. The best part is that I often dream about him afterwards, and for a moment, when in this dream-state, he is still alive. We have new interactions that I can still remember the next day. This is all depicted in the video, with duller more monotone colours used during the verses to represent the time lying in darkness before falling to sleep, these images depicting more literal memories or references. This then explodes into the psychedelic colour of the sleepy 'dream-state 'instrumental sections, where things get a bit more abstract and vibrant until we return to normality in the next day/verse in a cyclical fashion. I enjoyed making this video as I feel like I could explore/express the narrative and my emotions further than the song would allow me on its own, and it was great to learn a new medium.”

Forward

By Artist: Qazi & Qazi

Project: Youth Music NextGen Fund, West Midlands

Set in the chapel at their old university, the room was lit with portable lighting and lamps and ambient lighting from Qazi & Qazi's set design, including all of the candles (real flame and battery-powered) the pair could find at home and gather between them. Filmed on a small DSLR camera, they did four full takes, one clean, one eating, one messy, one in the aftermath, and self-edited and colour graded the entire video. Qazi & Qazi were inspired by gothic art/literature/film, the Renaissance, paintings by Moreau, vampires, Biblical paintings and divinity. Based on the lyrics of their song 'Forward', and the idea of finding ways forward through life, including the mundane, the pair were inspired by the idea that no matter what you're going through in a day, you still have to eat to survive. They say: "We wanted to show the rituals of daily life, the ritual of surviving, the ritual of prayer, the ritual of surrender, whilst visually referencing the painful or peaceful, often indulgent, human ways we do that, whether lonely or in company.”

Wistful Tenderness

By Artist: Sarah Angel

Project: Reform Radio CIC, North West

The inspiration for this music video came from Sarah Angel's new-found love and the cheesy Mills & Boon books her mum and aunties would read, that Sarah and my cousin would sneak off with whilst growing up. Sarah says: "The lyrics lean towards me being the main girl in a period romance type drama and this is also captured in the visual. I wanted both the visuals and lyrics to have comedic value. When the video was filmed, Bridgerton had just been released on Netflix and we used this as inspiration as well, blended in with my own flamboyantly punk nature.”

SIP

By Artist: StudioWyzz

Project: HQ CAN Community Interest Company, East Midlands

The vision for the video was inspired by noir movies from the 1950s. The song included sax and had a jazzy, old-school feel to it, so the goal was to enhance that through the visuals. In order to achieve that specific look, the video was shot in black and white, it was overlaid with a heavy grain effect and the text was animated to imitate a 'gate wave' effect (mechanical swinging of a film strip while it is being pulled through a frame window in a film camera) typical for films from that era. The idea was to reference the 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' movie, so StudioWyzz plays poker with the extras inside a boxing ring. A lot of crash zoom-ins and rapid cuts were used to make the reference to Guy Richie's work even clearer, but also because they fitted really well to the retro aesthetic.

LOSS

By Artist: Yv Shells

Project: Youth Music NextGen Fund, London

The video is a series of connective paintings. Yv Shells is really inspired by fine art and took references from paintings including Velázquez's Christ in the House of Mary and Martha, and Edward Hopper's Nighthawks to build the frames. The song is about an abusive relationship that comes to an end. As the protagonist, Shells wanted an eeriness to the video that reflected the danger of an abusive relationship. That's why there's lots of cowboy references and the Marina Abramovic arrow reference at the end.
Yv Shells says: "I made it that I was always looking directly at the camera unless the actress was looking at the camera to reflect the idea that in our relationship she was always the most important. My actions are dictated by hers. The lighting was inspired by the work of Caravaggio and was purposefully soft so that all the images would look like paintings. The boat scene at the end is a reflective portion of the song where I realise I've lost my way and the me who I used to be is departing from me but even after all I've been through, I'm still chasing after that feeling."
There are no special effects, everything was done live and Yv Shells edited the footage himself.