For my case study, I decided to have a look at the music video director; Mark Romanek - whose "directing work includes feature films, music videos, and commercials" as stated by Wikipedia. I decided to look and him and his work and noticed he had done quite a few music videos that I have seen before and very much enjoyed. I think his style of music video, in more recent years, is quite close to the style I want to aim for except I won't be including the artist singing like he has done.
His most famous music video was the cover by Johnny Cash of Nine Inch Nail's song "Hurt" which was extraordinarily moving to both critics and fans alike. The song expresses "self-loathing and the futility of worldly accomplishments" as it was a song sung by Johnny Cash "near the end of his life" and within his own home.
IMDb have said that Romanek had decided to film Johnny Cash's music video for "Hurt" for free for it had moved him plenty as well. After filming it, Romanek sent it to the singer of Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor whom "was in session with Zack De La Rocha (of Rage Against the Machine fame)" at the time and upon watching, both had to leave the room as they were both brought to tears by the video.
The video was nominated for seven VMAs, he won one for cinematography, and also won his third Grammy for such a moving music video as there are many snippets of a younger and cockier version of Cash which I found to be quite sad yet sweet.
His latest music video that he directed is Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" as they worked on it over the course of three days. The video itself had mixed views of both positive and negative - some found it cringe worthy, uncomfortable and mocking, the positive views on this though was that it was funny, quite entertaining and appealed to all ages, yet was apparently "ill-timed" according to the website HitFlix due to many debates that was happening at the time.
I've noticed that Mark includes the artist in all of his music videos and somewhat follows the genre theory for the few that I have watched by him as the music videos he has made often follows the genre of the band themselves. For example, Nine Inch Nail's song "Perfect Drug" had quite a dark and horror kind of theme for the music video which matched with the bands dark lyrics and deep sound of the instruments - this is the same for Johnny Cash's video for "Hurt" which seemed to be a reminiscing kind of song and which was shown through all the old tapes used in the music video. IMDb have stated this his style is ever similar to "Stanley Kubrick's style in filming."
I decided to look into the past of Mark Romanek as well since this is a case study and found out that he inspired to be a film director thanks to the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey at age 9" as he then started experimenting with different types of filming equipment throughout the years. He then went to college and in which case got a degree in cinema and photography as he worked as an assistant in directing to Brian De Palma, during the making of Home Movies, "an autobiographical film De Palma conceived as an exercise for his students". Romanek's first feature film was "Static", released in 1986 and as about a man who "claimed to have invented a television set capable of showing a live picture of Heaven" as this film had ended up creating a cult in London.
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