Music video director study

1. MUSIC VIDEO DIRECTOR
STUDY
By Marcus Bowring

2. DIRECTORS
• These are some of the most famous music video directors:
Spike Jonze Hype Williams Michel Gondry

3. SPIKE JONZE
• Director, actor, screenwriter and
producer Spike Jonze was born
Adam Spiegel on October 22, 1969,
in Rockville, Maryland. Related to
the Spiegel family and an heir to its
catalogue fortune, Jonze grew up
in the Washington D.C. with his
mother and older sister. By the time
he entered high school, he had
adopted the name "Spike Jonze"
and was participating in
competitive skateboarding and
BMX bicycling.
• Immediately after his graduation
from high school, Jonze moved to
Los Angeles and began working as
an editorial assistant at Freestylin', a
biker magazine. In 1991, he helped
found Dirt, a spin-off of the popular
teen magazine Sassy, aimed at
teenage male readers.

4. SPIKE JONZE
Jonze's breakthrough video was for the song
"Sabotage" by the Beastie Boys, was an inspired take-
off on 1970s cop shows; the video earned four MTV
Video Music Awards, including one for Jonze (best
director). That same year, Jonze cemented his
reputation for innovation and creativity with his eye-
catching video for Weezer's "Buddy Holly," in which
the alternative band performed their hit single in the
middle of what appeared to be an episode of the
1970s sitcom Happy Days.

5. SPIKE JONZE
Throughout the 1990s, Jonze directed music videos for
many other prominent artists—including R.E.M., the
Breeders, Puff Daddy, the Chemical Brothers and
Björk—as well as a number of memorable television
commercials for companies like Nike, Sprite, Nissan,
and Coca-Cola. His interest and talent also extended
to the other side of the camera: He was dragged
behind a van in a TV spot for Levi's 501, and played bit
parts in the films Mi Vida Loca (1993) and The Game
(1997).

6. HYPE WILLIAMS
• Williams was born in Queens, New
York and is of African American and
Honduran descent. He later
attended Adelphi University.
Williams' big break came when he
began working with Classic
Concepts Video Productions. Lionel
"Vid Kid" Martin & VJ Ralph
McDaniels created Williams' first
opportunity with the "Filmmakers
With Attitude" moniker (FWA), which
was Williams' first video company.
• A signature style used by Williams throughout the
vast majority of his videos was the Fisheye lens
which distorted the camera view around the
central focus. This was used by the tandem
Williams/Perez in "Gimme Some More" by Busta
Rhymes and ‘The Rain’ by Missy Elliott, however it
was dropped by 2003, when he experienced his
lowest level of production activity since the
beginning of his career as a music video director.

7. HYPE WILLIAMS
Awards Williams has received for his video work include the
Billboard Music Video Award for Best Director of the Year (1996), the
Jackson Limo Award for Best Rap Video of the Year (1996) for Busta
Rhymes' "Woo Hah!! Got You All in Check", the NAACP Image
Award (1997), the 8th annual Music Video Production Association
Award for Black Music Achievement (1997), MTV Video Music
Award in the Best Rap Video (1998) category for Will Smith's "Gettin'
Jiggy wit It", MTV Video Music Award for Best Group Video (1999) for
TLC's "No Scrubs", and the BET Award for Best Director (2006) for
Kanye West's "Gold Digger". In 2006, Williams was honoured by MTV
with its Video Vanguard Award, presented in honour of his
achievements as a filmmaker.

8. MICHEL GONDRY
• He grew up in Versailles with a
family who was very influenced by
pop music. When he was young,
Gondry wanted to be a painter or
an inventor. In the 80s he entered in
an art school in Paris where he
could develop his graphic skills and
where he also met friends with
whom he created a pop-rock band
called Oui-Oui.
• Hollywood became interested in
Gondry's success and he directed
his first feature movie Human Nature
(2001), adapting a Charlie
Kaufman's scenario, which was
shown in the 2001 Cannes Festival.
Although it wasn't a big success, this
film allowed him to direct Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004),
for which he again collaborated
with Charlie Kaufman. The movie
became a popular independent
film and he and his co-writers won
an Oscar for it.

9. MICHEL GONDRY
In his video clips and commercials, he was a pioneer for a lot of
things. For example the video clip he made for IAM (Je danse le
Mia) was the first video clip using the morphing technics. And
above all he invented the technique of several cameras taking
pictures in the same time around somebody. This technique was
used for the first time in a commercial for insurance, then in Björk's
"Army of Me" video clip and in The Matrix (1999).