A Townsville-made production ranks among the Top 30 in this year’s CLIPPED Music Video Festival.
Filmmaker Robert Crispe and musician Colie collaborated on their hand-drawn music video for Colie’s 2021 track, Angry Eyes. The pair is now hoping for the top spot against some of last year’s biggest names in Aussie music including Genesis Owusu, Ziggy Alberts, Tones and I and Allday.
Making the Angry Eyes Music Video
The Angry Eyes video was a labour of love for both artists. The song stems from one of Colie’s personal experience, while Robert dedicated roughly 200 hours to producing the music video.
“The song is actually written about my dog Charlie, who ran away in a storm,” said Colie.
“It was a crazy scary experience because we were so worried about her. I wrote a song about it, but I was trying to write about it so it wasn’t like ‘my dog ran away in a storm’ – I wanted to be a bit more poetic and not quite so literal.
“I was conscious about that when I spoke to Rob about the video but also wanting to reference that it could be about that. Rob came up with this amazing concept with a cat instead of a dog and outer space and all this other crazy stuff.”
Robert says he tries to avoid being too literal with any music video he makes.
“I thought ‘What’s the opposite of a dog? A cat. What’s the opposite of earth? Space’,” Robert laughs.
“But like with most things I do, I like to take the opportunity to push my comfort zone and experiment with something I’ve been wanting to work on and give it credibility.
“In this case, it was some hand-drawn animation. I like the idea of space in general and wanted Angry Eyes to have that nostalgic, lo-fi, sci-fi sort of artwork. I can’t reference particular artists, but I turned to Pinterest, finding some interesting colour combinations and just piecing together a storyline of cat wandering around enjoying life in space while everyone else panics.”
Being named CLIPPED Music Video Festival Finalists
Robert submitted the Angry Eyes video to the CLIPPED Music Video Festival when it was released in early 2021 and forgot about it as he turned to other creative pursuits.
“I didn’t really have that many hopes for it, Robert said. “Not that I thought it was shit, just knowing that the entry pool would be so big.”
Robert and Colie are both proud to be representing regional artists among the Top 30 entrants.
“Rob and I are both born and bred Townsville, very North Queensland, true blue kind of people and it just feels good to have recognition on a national level for something that we dreamt up,” Colie said.
“When we went into CLIPPED, we knew it was going to be amazing, but we weren’t expecting to be recognised that way. It’s definitely a nice pat on the back and it reinvigorates you a bit to be creative and keep pushing forward with your art.”
The Winners of the CLIPPED Music Video Festival will be named at a screening of the Top 30 videos in Sydney on 25 March 2022.
Robert is now working on a passion project titled Birds in Paradise. Colie will release her next album in mid-2022.
