Keene State Media Productions (KSMP) celebrated the art of the music video last week by hosting a film festival in the Putnam Theater.
On Thursday, March 6, KSMP held their music video film festival, the organization’s first event scheduled for the semester. Two student-made music videos were screened for the audience at the event.
Senior and KSMP Vice President Jacob Conway said the organization made the choice to host a music video film festival because music videos are such a unique form of media.
“Filmmaking for music videos is very specific because you can come up with a story idea or you can make a movie that follows a specific narrative structure and talks about themes and stuff like that, but you’re implementing another whole different type of art and media, which is music, which is the forefront of the video,” Conway said. “If the tone and the messaging of the video doesn’t link up with the audio itself of the music, then it gets a little wonky.”
Another reason KSMP decided to hold the music video festival was because of past interest in a similar event from last year, Conway said.
“Last year we tried to do a little showcase thing but we ended up getting six submissions, so we wanted to actually put aside time this year to make something bigger, like a film festival that can reach more than just people in the club,” Conway said.
Conway, who made one of the films that was shown during the event, also talked about the process of creating his music video.
“I knew that I wanted to do something with lyrics, but lyrics and style and genre of music gets very tricky if you don’t have the right visuals to pair up with it,” Conway said. “It was just another day listening to music and then the song that I used came up and I immediately came up with the idea of two people spinning, and I was like, ‘That’s it.’ Just random inspiration that usually comes out of nowhere.”
Conway said he made his music video in one day.
“I filmed it with friends,” Conway continued. “We signed out the green screen room, filmed outside on campus. It was a blast, [we] filmed it in maybe four and a half hours.”
First-year student William Gagnon attended the event and said he enjoyed watching the student-made music videos.
“I’m a film production major myself. I just figured I might as well look at what the other production majors are doing,” Gagnon said. “Because I’m a freshman, I might as well see what the people later on in the course are making and see what cool stuff they can make for music videos.”
Gagnon said that he would “definitely” come to more events like this one in the future.
KSMP’s next film festival will be a found footage film festival, taking place in the Putnam Theater on April 3.
Justin Dearborn can be reached at
