The Creative Role Of The Director

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 (see me if you want to borrow any of these directors showreels) is perhaps the most striking example of authorial voice and demonstrates the potential of the medium to reach a mass audience with unusual and experimental work. 

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.”

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”.

So, as you can see the directors have very different views and approaches to making promos.

Mac Miller's 'I am who I am (Killing Time)'s music video was directed by Ian Wolfson of Rex Arrow.  I like this video as I believe it's such a unique visual to match the video, giving feeling of nostalgia and as if you were dreaming. Ian Wolfson is one of my favourite music video directors as he has been working with Mac since he started and by watching their videos chronologically you can see the videos become more sophisticated and deep, just like the content of Mac's songs. I like to think that he will inspire my idea as in this video it visually looks like a work of art, I would like to have the same feeling with my own.

Flatbush Zombies and Trash Talk's '97.92' was directed by AplusFilmz' & Pier Picture's house directors. It was created using a 360-degree HD camera rig with a remote-controlled drone octo-copter. The device is the H3Pro7, which shoots with 7 GoPro cameras all rolling simultaneously. The 7 shots are synced and stitched together to create the full-360 spherical view, which can then be manipulated with the effects and camera movements you see here. This is one of my favourite music videos purely for the use of modern technology to help their artistic vison. I don't think this video will inspire my music video too much, as we would not be able to film and create the same effects that are demonstrated in this video.