2. Background to Benny Film
Benny Boom is a music video director and
current director of Gorilla Flix, Inc. He also
served as a protégé of veteran
director X and Hype Williams.
A large institution in regards to their high
profile amongst the R&B/ Hip Hop world
– as Gorilla Flix aim to stylize / glorify
artists conceptual music videos.
He’s worked on videos for artists such as
Cassie on her “Me & U” video, to Brandy’s
“Right Here (Departed). His trademark is
tweaking the letterbox format; instead of just
using black bars on the top and bottom of
the frame to frame the image, many videos
by X actually feature the bars opening
vertically to reveal the video and closing
vertically at the end, like a letter box.
A signature style
used by Williams
throughout the vast
majority of his videos
(shot mostly with
cinematographer
John Perez) was
the Fisheye
lens which distorted
the camera view
around the central
3. Benny Boom’s style of directing
His music videos often feature fonts in the
beginning crediting himself. An example of this
would in Nicki Minaj’s video for: “Right By My
Side”, “Beez in the trap”, “Pound the Alarm” there
was a showcase of names from the main
participants of the video. This creates a cinematic
feel – as the only time that director’s names are
mentioned is in the credits.
However in the early days of Benny Boom’s
career – in videos such as “Can’t Nobody” by
Kelly Rowland saw Benny Boom experiment with
narrative videos – however was not as stylized
and audiences have seen a progress from “Can’t
Nobody” to more iconic videos such as “Right By
My Side”
4. Examples of people Benny Boom
has worked with:
Nicki Minaj
Kelly Rowland
Ciara
New Kids on the block
Dappy
5. What can I incorporate into my
video as inspiration from Benny
Boom?
More than anything I’ve been inspired by the
hyper reality that is conveyed in videos of this
nature. One of my initial ideas to present a
distinctly different world in my video rather
than convey realism. This is because the
stylized hyper real situations conveyed in
Benny Boom’s videos are of an appealing
nature and although my video is not of the
same genre, there are certain concepts that I
can adapt to an alternative music video
