The Wave Pictures: Sweetheart

If a director told you he’d pulled your music video out of a skip you’d probably expect it to be a load of rubbish. Ben Reed however, can obviously see the value in the things other people throw away.

Originally from Bridgend, Wales, Reed has spent the last four years working as a TV runner in Cardiff. In his spare time, though, he’s satisfied his inner “muso, sad geek daydreamer” by making super- low-budget music videos for friends’ bands, including The Jelas (who he lived with) and Race Horses, who he met when they appeared on a TV show he was working for.

Those videos were noticed by Moshi Moshi Records who approached Reed to make something for The Wave Pictures’ track Sweetheart (which led to a nomination for Best Budget Video at the 2010 MVAs).

A few weeks later, he found himself dodging flying hardbacks. “Their songs have a lot of lyrics and they’re well-known for that so I wanted to focus on the words,” says the director, who draws inspiration from Jean-Luc Godard and Jan Švankmajer, among others. “My friend works in a book warehouse in Bridgend that buys tons of books and puts them on Amazon, but the ones without barcodes get thrown in a skip so I convinced his boss to let me root through it for free for a few days. I took probably a thousand books home and just tore them up. They were very accommodating because I kept getting in the way when they were trying to throw in more.”

The video is a witty, stop-motion, split-screen affair that matches the song’s lyrics to the letters, words and pictures from the piles of texts Reed salvaged. In short it’s the mother of all flip books. “I tried to avoid putting anything really perverse or spiteful in, but there are lots of terrible, daft puns,” confesses the director with a cheeky chuckle.

Now signed to HSI London & Dept.A Animation @ HSI, Reed is keen to direct commercials and is planning on moving to London soon. He’s also hoping to make more promos: “I’ve always listened to music and dreamed of pictures,” he says, though he predicts he’ll likely be working with low budgets again. “The bands I really like don’t have much money.” Not that working with low budgets has been a problem so far. After all, what do you need money for if you can pull a promo out of a skip?