Band Makes ‘Unpopular’ Music Video
Local band Weak13 achieved critical acclaim for their music video ‘Unpopular’, including a screening at Birmingham horror film festival and winning in the Bangkok movie awards as well as at the Bracciano film and arts festival.
Speaking to singer and guitarist of Weak13, Nick Townsend, he told me that he wanted the song ‘Unpopular’ to be “one of the best examples of what a Weak13 song is” and an “entry point” to the band.
The name, ‘Unpopular’, at first seems counterproductive, but Nick explained he was going to “use the word unpopular and popularize it” as, in his words, “nobody wants to be unpopular”.
However, the problems the band then faced were that the video needed to be “just as exciting as the song”, along with the realization that they hadn’t got “2 million pounds to spend on a music video”. So instead, Nick bought a pack of clay for a Claymation (stop-motion animation) and for the first year, began learning what he “could and couldn’t do”, as well as working out “how to build a set on a miniature scale”, essentially “experimenting for twelve months”.
In the last two months of the first year, Nick says he thought he was ready and started filming, getting the first 20 seconds done, but by the time it had come round to starting the second scene, around four months later, after building the next sets and models, he realized he had “become a better animator by then”, and “scrapped the beginning”. However, what he scrapped actually does appear in the music video, as a “15 second TV clip in the background”, about three and a half minutes into the video
Nick says he gets “a kick out of seeing all the robots” in the ‘Unpopular’ music video, as a self-proclaimed “Sci-Fi nerd”, so was inspired by Star Trek and Star wars, and says he wanted to see if it was something he could do, and make his own “Weak13 cinematic universe”.
After so much critical acclaim, Nick says he is going to be making another music video, but using real people this time, for their “very Sci-Fi sounding song”, ‘Cell phone towers’ with “lots of Sci-Fi elements” and inspired by the twilight zone and the supernatural.
Charlotte Adderley
