Task 1.13 Director case study and Auteur theory Spike Jonze: Born as Adam Spiegel on October 22nd 1969 in Rockville, Maryland, he is an American producer, screenwriter, director and actor, who has worked on music videos, advertisements, films and television. He is known for his music video direction with Fatboy Slim, Björk and Kanye West. He was also the co-creator and executive producer of the MTV show Jackass, as well as cofounding the Palm Pictures Company and Directors Label with filmmakers Chris Cunningham and Michel Gondry. He has also won several awards for his work, including 4 academy awards, those being: Best Director for “Being John Malkovich”, Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Original Song, for “The Moon Song” from “Her”. He also won the Golden Globe award for Best Screenplay, the Writer’s Guild of America for Best Original Screenplay, and the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2014 for “Her”. Spike Jonze has directed music videos for a number of different music genres including Experimental, Rock and Electronic. Fatboy Slim – Weapon Of Choice: Mise-En-Scene: The video takes place in an abandoned hotel lobby and features the performer wearing a suit, dancing and flying around the lobby. The lighting all comes from the hotel’s actual lights and mixes both high and low key lighting because of this. Cinematography: The video begins with a long close up, which cuts to a long shot of the radio, which is playing the song, featured in the video. The effect of the long shot is that it gives the impression of looking at the radio from afar, like from the eyes of the performer. The video then goes on to use a long and tracking shot of the performer as he begins to dance to the song. The video then cuts to a brief close up of the performer using the service bell at the front desk, in time with the music, which is followed, again, by a series of long shots to emphasise the performance, this collection of shots is followed by a mid shot performance and then, again, by long shots. The video switches between these shot types to focus on either the whole performance, or one specific part, such as the torso and face, or just the face. Editing: The shots in the video are all connected by jump cuts, as they maintain a fast pace throughout the video, which matches the pace of the song. Many of the shots also connect through the action, so that the action is continuous throughout the video, for example, when the performer enters the elevator and then is seen exiting it in the next shot, or when the performer jumps off of a table at the end of one shot and is seen at the start of the next shot landing on the floor. Representation: The video doesn’t match the song much, aside from the dancing, and doesn’t cut exactly to the beat all the time, however uses experimental and good cinematic style to its advantage. Daft Punk – Da Funk: Mise-En-Scene:
The video takes place in a busy New York City, and focuses on the character Charles, who wears urban clothing, such as a jacket and jeans, caries around a boom-box which cannot be turned off or have the volume changed – which constantly plays the music of the video, has his leg in a cast, causing his walk to be uneven as he relies on a crutch, and is portrayed by an anthropomorphic dog. The female character in the video’s story, Beatrice, who is Charles’ childhood neighbour, appears in the video wearing standard casual urban clothes and offers Charles dinner at her home, where she leaves on the bus, although Charles stays at the bus stop. Cinematography: The video begins with a collection of time-lapse shots of busy streets in New York City, and then proceeds to a close up shot of someone signing Charles’ cast, as he backs up and leaves, the video cuts to a long shot showing Charles stand up and leave. The video then cuts to a collection of long and mid shots, showing Charles walking around the streets as 2 kids laugh at his walk, this then cuts to a mid shot as they stop at a set of street lights Editing: The shots in the video are connected by jump cuts, which match the tempo of the music and maintain a fast pace throughout the video. Many of the shots throughout the video also connect through the actions that occur in the scene, for example, towards the start of the video, we see the character Benny writing on Charles’ cast, when he stands up to back away the shot jumps from a close up of his face to a long shot showing both characters full body. Representation: The video has no real meaning or representation as it is just a dog man wandering the streets of New York, instead the video plays the role of the introduction to a story, which was indeed continued in another Daft Punk video – “Fresh”. There are clear connections between the styles of these 2 music videos, for example, neither of them use any clear representation of anything, instead the music videos seem to focus on the cinematic experience of making enjoyable visuals, whether that be through a story or a drawn out dance routine. Another similarity is the fast pace of the videos. Both videos only use jump cuts to connect shots and maintain a fast pace throughout, even if not cutting precisely to the beat of the music, and also in the way that many shots have flowing action, where a character begins an action in one shot and continues from the same point in the next shot. The videos are also similar in their variety of shots, as both videos use a solid mix of close ups, mid shots, tracking shots and long shots to emphasise the most important part of each scene, and to good effect. The decision to focus on a high quality cinematic experience over some form of representative meaning in the videos is probably largely due to the director’s background in film-making and production, this could justify Spike Jonze as an Auteur, as his creative decision to change focus of what is most important to show in a music video was influenced by his personal background as oppose to being decided simply as it is standard in music videos. Hype Williams is a film director, producer and music video director that in many ways operates very similarly to Spike Jonze, for example his music video collaboration with Will Smith for “Getting’ Jiggy Wit It”, which won the MTV video music award for best rap video in 1998, is similar to the 2 previously mentioned videos in the video’s overall pace, which is created from a mixture between the fast tempo of the song and the quick, jump cut editing. The videos are also similar in their shot variety, as they all use a solid mix of close up, mid, tracking and long shots to emphasise different parts of the performance throughout the video, although Hype Williams seems more confident in using far more moving shots and actually shows some differentiation in representation, again using the Will Smith example, throughout the video, women are used as barely dressed dancers and are used to little more effect than as eye candy to sell the video, whereas the artist was always fully dressed and in one case even wearing a winter coat. Hype Williams is also described as an Auteur due to his music videos essentially developing their own creative style, especially in the hip-hop genre.
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