Benny Benassi - Spaceship : Director Ray Kay

I have some great artists lined up to showcase. But, today a video caught my attention, which I felt needed talking about. Here we have the new video for Benny Benassi. The director of this video is Ray Kay. Ray Kay produces some absolutely stunning fashion photography and music videos for all the big names [seriously too many to mention. Just check his site]. All of his work that I have seen really pushes the fashion style visuals and every still of music video is a fantastic, stylishly composed still and very sexy. So with all this credibility and experience it makes me wonder how a video like this has slipped through. I find it uninspired and clichéd. The theme of the track is 'Spaceship' and visually that message comes across, but the way it's done is just so.. cheesy. We have a space ship that looks like a cross between Star Trek and Tron [just not quite as good as either] floating through the clichéd meteor shower. Once inside the ship we are confronted with the stars of the video, green-screened onto a very nightclub looking dock and showered with jerky, unnatural camera movements. The shots are very rarely creative. Also, for years photographers strived to lose lens-flare from their shots, but digital film has over recent years brought it back. With today's software and used right it can look great! Unfortunately, this video abuses the flare and is a good example of why we should stop using it again. Eventually the video lands on an alien planet, but instead of creativity we are confronted with another uninspired and clichéd mars scene with Kelis [badly] floating through an explosion that seems to have finally arrived from 1980. The only perk's being the 3D particle effects ripping through the skies and the colour change from blues to orange. I don't like to rip on other peoples work, but this video pissed me off. With so many super-talented artists struggling to get noticed, it seems disgusting to me that superstar creatives like Ray Kay can get away with this.



To play fair here is a second video by Ray Kay. The video is for 'Adam Lambert - For your Entertainment' and is brilliant. Great compositions and very stylish. The shots showcase his fashion imagery and the lighting is amazing. The shots are tight. The edits are tight. Overall this is a VERY sexy production! What happened with spaceship?
*apologies for bad video. official video has embedding disabled. link above^