2. Artists that Jonze has work with: Kanye West Beastie Boys Arcade Fire LCD soundsystem Bjork Fatboy Slim Notorious BIG The Chemical Brothers Daft Punk R.E.M The Pharcyde
3. Introduction Jonze is a surrealist who is regarded as one of the most successful music video directors of all time due to his unpredictable style and backlog of working with some of the world’s biggest artists. He is best known for the video of ‘Sabotage’ by the Beastie Boys and ‘Weapon of Choice’ by Fatboy Slim which have little correlation in style but are equally unique. Visual Style Although Jonze has explored making different styles of music video shot in different locations, there are a few correlations between he music videos. Usually his music videos are shot in an urban environment such as in ‘Sabotage’ and ‘Drop’ by The Pharcyde. I believe this is because the artists he works with tend to be members of rap or dance genres of music, which are hugely popular in urban environments.
4. Another visual style of Jonze is to take a situation and manipulate a part of the visuals to create a surreal video within a very real environment. For example in the first part of ‘Weapons of Choice’ by FatBoy Slim, Christopher Walken is seen in normal clothes in a normal hotel lobby. He then progresses into a dance routine throughout the building in which becomes very energetic and finally climaxes with him flying, wall to wall, in the main lobby. There we find a introduction of high verisimilitude transformed into a surreal video through just one factor; the movement of the Actor. Jonze also uses this in ‘Drop’ by The Pharcyde. The members of the group are seen walking through urban streets in mid-day with nothing else surreal but their movement. The entire video has been shot backwards but in a clever way whereby when the film is reversed in the final cut, the artists walk in the correct way but have surreal movements. Such as jumping upward without the logical movements required to perform this in real life, shown to the left.
5. Why I like Spike Jonze’s work Spike Jonze is one of the few directors that have the ability to make a particular song more famous for it’s video instead of the audio. But what sets him apart from the others is that his work doesn’t use any of the usual techniques the vast majority of directors use: Goodwin’s theory of key factors present in music videos: - A relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics. - A relationship between the music and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the music. - Genre-related style and iconography present. - Multiple close-ups of the main artist or vocalist. - Voyeurism often plays a major part, especially in relation to females. - Intertextual references to other media texts may be present. Spike Jonze
