Music Video Part I

Nell’s videos often use treatments or concepts that evoke melancholy or nostalgia, and the variations on these themes increase in production value as the group evolves. The group’s debut video, “It’s Like That Anyway,” uses simple black and white treatments with lots of focus on environment and instruments over group or individual member shots. In “Stay” we see the group clearly as they watch a woman rob a Memory Bank. “Cat” evokes feelings of introversion by confining the group to a woman’s apartment, while Kim Jong Wan occasionally sings outside the woman’s door in a darkened hallway. Nell often sings about the hidden parts of relationships, and these stories are also reflected in their videos. In “Thank You” we see a man move through stages of grief after an unexpected breakup, while in “Healing” the ups and downs of intimacy are revealed through light and dark - a treatment that continues in  the video for “Lose One’s Mind.”

Nell’s first acclaimed album was Separation Anxiety, and this album is also the one that had the most music video promotional support, with at least five visual productions: “Time Spent Walking Through Memories,” “Promise Me,” “Afterglow,” and two versions of “Drifting Apart.”  Here we begin to see small upticks in production values, with the use of more props, more environmental details, or even in some cases, the use of actors and detailed storylines.