Holly Gennero: Die Hard’s wife and founder of Genero.tv (I assume)

It’s not easy to produce a decent, low-budget music video (especially when you can’t shoot new footage of the featured artists) but some of the winners that come out of Genero.tv are surprisingly good.  Last year the crowdsourced music video site received more than 1,900 submissions and from those the Gennero Genero staff selected 140 nominees for their “Video of the Year” award.  The big 2012 winner was shot for for Passion Pit’s “I’ll be Alright” contest by a filmmaker named Greg Barth.  The video already earned $3,000 for winning the Passion Pit contest but the director will receive a $5,000 bonus for winning the Video of the Year competition.  Here’s a little background info from the Genero blog:

Greg’s video became the official video for ‘I’ll Be Alright’ and has gone on to receive 400,000 views and counting on Passion Pit’s YouTube channel; it was also selected as a Staff Pick on Vimeo. The video is striking, surreal and packed with deeper meaning while being hugely entertaining and memorable. It’s a wonderfully realised concept, and expertly edited.

Greg describes the film: “A heart broken museum security guard sees reality shift after abusing his medication, bringing him back to a glorified vision of his past love. Each piece of art suddenly takes part in illustrating the love cycle surrounding him. From the triangle symbolizing Seduction (Gold), to the Fiery Passion that consumes a relationship (Yellow), the entangled and complicated Break Up (Red, Dynamite), ending up with the hopeful and healing Rebirth ( Green).”

Like most modern Internet-users I have the attention span of a drunk four-year-old so I rarely have the patience to sit through an entire 3 minute long music video.  But this one really struck a cord with me for some reason and I watched it from beginning to end…twice. It’s a simple idea but it’s well executed and weirdly hypnotic.

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Genero also picked a “Director of the Year” and it was Julia Rogowska and her team, “OMGITSME.”  Together they submitted 5 darn good videos in 2012 but it looks like they only had one winner.  But the OMGITSME team will receive $10,000 for winning the “Director of the Year” award so that’s nice.  You can see more of their work here.