As you may know, I am a Video Editor – and one of the things (probably the main thing) that inspired me to work in television post production was actually music videos.

Music videos are one of my favourite things in the world and I spent hours and I MEAN literally hours when I was growing up watching them Even now in the modern world, I can find myself getting lost on YouTube watching music videos for hours on end – they are an addiction.

This month we are looking at a boyband that was a huge at the end of the nineties and the beginning of the noughties – *NSYNC. I was more a Backstreet Boys Fan then N*Sync however the one thing that could never go ignored was just how fascinating this bands music videos are. Some of their videos really did make a huge impact on the music industry and also on me as an editor.

*NSYNC have some amazing videos and actually have inspired me in lots of different ways. For example, the Charlie Chaplin to the intro of Gone (above) was one of the first clips I saw that actually got me interested in Silent Comedy and I took it as inspiration for a silent film I produced at College called Mister Alf (pasted below).

So, with it being May, which is an iconic month for the N*Sync Play on words and also because they have so many fun videos I thought it was time to explore the world of boyband music videos as we haven’t done that yet.

*NSYNC – Bye Bye Bye

Why did you choose this particular video?

This music video absolutely blew my mind when I first saw this video – the whole idea of the puppet video was so unique and stood out that I was fascinated by it. However saying that, UK music shows never showed a lot of the video so it wasn’t until years later that I actually saw the video in full. It is a great music video, I love the editing but the puppetry is really what makes this video pure gold.

So, what is the narrative?

The guys are puppets that are being manipulated by a girl that is pulling the strings and throughout the video the band are trying to escape the girl that they are metaphorically trying to break up with. The end of the video ends with an epic car chase.

Favourite parts of the video?

The introduction is always a very classy place for an *NSync video and this is one that really is one of the bests. It slowly fades and zooms into a puppet theatre that is color graded in a sepia colour which fades into colour when the music starts. So simple but super effective. Also the way that the video is old fashioned when the band are being brought down as puppets also connotes that we are being brought into a surrealist world that you need to use your imagination to imagine it thoroughly.

The transition between the guys on strings and the girl in control of the strings is so slick that you think that it is one continuous shot but if you look at the video frame by frame you can see that it is two different shots that have been put together. Look at the bottom right of this shot the string is significantly smaller then what the girl is holding but the edit transition is so slick and quick it is invisible to the naked eye.

 The dancing is by far my favourite part of the whole video as it is so good, that was one thing this band were so good at and that was making their routines something you wanted to learn. Even now watching it I want to learn the dance moves but the fact that they are pretending to be puppets is really impressive.

We have to mention the blue room that they dance in – I am not sure if it is meant to be the inside of the train but this is the most heavily edited – it is the home to sped up dancing, light flares and lots of motion blur. There is nothing particular that stands out but as a sequence I think it is a really great and fun edit and so different to the rest of the video. I guess it was all done to really highlight the dancing.