A music video's design can be as vital as that of a film's; the music video must deliver its narrative and promotion in a relatively small time scale. Its mise en scene, and editing must all converge towards a single message, a single direction. Complicated narratives must be explained clearly and concisely on screen - this is where music video directors become invaluable - succeeding in this regard, while'st being grounded in a great song, has its rewards through critical acclaim and praise. Ultimately however, a director's success in a music video is often proportional to the quality of the song they are working with. In either case, one assists the other in a kind of synergy.
An example of a music video that was subject to heavy direction is The Shoes' "Time to Dance" :
Directed by Daniel Wolfe, "Time to Dance" has Jake Gyllenhaal play the part of a troubled young man with murderous tendencies. He stalks various nightclubs and the other places where young people gather to party, isolating and killing them to satiate some form of blood-lust or anger within him. The video itself accompanies a club/punk dance track, which seems appropriate given that his murders are linked to areas where we find people dancing. This, almost short film, received praise from critics and was rated quite highly. It was nominated for 'best music video' at the Camerimage awards 2012
Another music video of Wolfe's, "Iron Sky" was once again nominated for 'best music video' at the Camerimage awards 2014:
In both videos, we can see that although the lyrics of the song are not directly linked to the visual content of each video, they are edited and filmed in a fashion that hints of the each mise en scene's relevance to the song it accompanies. For instance, Time to Dance is club/dance music, with the video's setting and film locations such as nightclub-london with a generally dark ambiance. In Iron Sky we see that a community of people are tormented by some form of nagging pain; a kind of migraine that can only be soothed by smoking something called "Aurora". The precise nature of this pain is unclear - at a point in the video, we see a woman wearing a headscarf, bleeding from the nose; perhaps these people are suffering from brain tumors? In any case, a clear message is present; these people, be they suffering physically or mentally, want to be free from the pain and free from their suffering. The lyrics of the song refer to this, making it a relevant music/video accompaniment.
Needless to say, a good music video draws more attention to the music behind it, which is where the importance of music video directors comes in to play. Wolfe has carefully crafted a narrative in each music video that bears relevance to the music behind it, while at the same time remaining original and unique in its delivery - embellishing the lyrics of the song without conforming to the usual visual content expected of music videos of each of their respective genre and in general. The length of time in which Wolfe had to include footage for each song was relatively quite lengthy, and in both cases we see that he has capitalised and has made what appear to be short films; Both of the videos in question introduce us to a narrative - a narrative that appears to continue beyond the footage we see without an obvious conclusion, but a narrative nonetheless - it allows the viewer to invest their interest into the music video, and by that, the music.
No comments:
Post a Comment