Press Release
22-year-old musician and filmmaker Michael Shanks is honoured to be invited back to the annual St Kilda Film Festival SoundKilda Competition, which
is to be held at The Astor Theatre this coming Thursday.
Last year, Shanks successfully took on Gotye’s smash hit music video, Somebody That I Used To Know, winning Best Independent Music Video and Best Overall Music Video; sharing the top prize with established filmmaker David Michôd, for his Children Collide clip, Loveless. Shanks’ clip, titled On The Borderline for his band Roadgeek, has since had over 288 thousand views on YouTube, as well as being ranked #13 on ABC’s ‘rage’ top Fifty music videos of 2012.
Shanks is overwhelmed to be selected once again this year amongst nineteen other finalists that include clips from established artists such as Missy Higgins, Gotye, Bob Dylan, and The Presets just to name a few.
Following tradition from last year, Shanks’ latest video clip, Towards the Sun, was not only self-produced in its entirety, but Shanks also wrote and recorded the song – performing all the instruments and vocals.The music video ‘Towards the Sun’ chronicles a violent uprising of domesticated cats (with digitally replaced human eyes) murdering their homo sapien masters.The clip relies heavily on seamless visual effects – something Shanks tackles entirely himself. “The music and the video were made in my sardine tin bedroom. The project helped justify my utter lack of a social life”.
It’s another massive step in the right direction for the unsigned artist who has already had online success, managing a YouTube Channel called Timtimfed which has over 53 thousand subscribers and is approaching 10 million views. Just like his music videos – everything on Shanks’ YouTube channel is entirely self-produced. “I guess the idea is to make a music video stupid enough that it tricks the viewer into listening to the song.” He jests, “And it’s that sort of shameless, shallow gimmick that has given me so much street cred.”Shanks is currently working full-time as a director for LateNite Films – a collective of exciting young filmmakers wanting to create new and exciting Australian content.