The creative role of the director

Task: Read the information below and add some of these quotes to your own posts. Which music video directors do you admire and why? Do you intend that their style should influence your own idea and if so how? Embed some of their videos to your post. 

John Stewart of the music production company Oil Factory, suggests that increasingly music videos reflect the desire of a director to demonstrate their power. The work of Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze and Chris Cunningham are perhaps the most obvious examples of authorial voice and demonstrates the potential of the medium ability director to reach a mass audience with unusual experimental work.

I  like the CGI used in the music promo for Bjork's song, All is full of love. This makes the robots look real, and have human characteristics  which is an impressive use of CGI. I may use CGI in my video, however, I do not think that the use of robots for CGI is necessary in my music video.

I like the Lover Letters video by Chris Cunningham for the way that it is one long clip, with very few cuts throughout the video. i like this because it makes the video flow really well, and the speed at which the camera travels is also at the right speed, to match the tempo of the music. However, I do not think that I will be using this approach in my music video as I would make the video look less aesthetically pleasing if we did not cut the clips of the man walking around town.

The famous music director Jonas Akerland commented that “Music videos aren’t meant to be more than eye candy, not supposed to live long, only supposed to be lifting up the music and make the artist look good. Not supposed to be an art piece lasting for years.”

Telephone by Lady Gaga, was clearly designed by Jonas Akerland with the male gaze in mid, and sticks very closely with his idea, of being eye candy, and only making the artist look good. I do not think this idea could work in my music video as it has a very even number of males and female viewers, so by introducing things that reflect the male gaze would not be appropriate for the female viewers.

Jonathan Glazer the director for Radiohead’s ‘Street Spirit’ video (1996) said “Your images may be the thing that defines the sound… it’s a really strange 3 minute period where you have to hook the audience visually.”

Spike Jonze said in 2000 “I look at short videos as short films, I always make sure they have a beginning, middle and end”.

David Fincher who directed features such as Seven and Fight Club after his success in making music videos commented that “Video is truly abstract, you have complete carte blanche in terms of what it can show”.

Shame, by The Motels, was directed in such a fashion by David Fincher to show someone looking out to themselves throughout the video. Personally, I do not like these kind of videos, so therefore this approach will not be used in my own music video.

Therefore it is clear that the directors have very different views and approaches to making promos. Some think that the promo should have a beginning, middle and end, others think that it should be about eye candy, and others believe that you have to grab the audience visually.