It’s always exciting when you learn that a musician you admire has collaborated with one of your favourite filmmakers for a unique project. Thankfully, there are plenty of crossovers in the music and film industry, and consequently a ton of fantastic projects to discover. Here are six of my favourite music videos that have been directed by some of my favourite filmmakers:
- BICEP – APRICOTS (dir. Mark Jenkin, 2020)
A quick scroll through the comments of BICEP’s music video APRICOTS exemplifies just how ambiguously moving the perfect combination of EDM and nature can be. Somehow, an enigmatic plethora of emotions is powerfully shown off in this Mark Jenkin-directed abstract video. It’s one of those “I wish I had that idea” concepts. Jenkin, whose breakthrough feature Bait won the BAFTA for Outstanding British Debut in 2019, fills every frame of this mostly stop motion video with chaotic yet calming, colour-enhanced shots of the countryside, shots that are often so intimately close and tactile. From leaves, shells, stones and other pieces of debris in quintessentially English environments, the pieces rotate and spin at extremely satisfying angles. The crux of the objects spinning aligns, in his own words from the commentary track, euphorically with the climax of the tune, crafting a joyous, moving and strikingly memorable video. Shot on location and in-studio, Jenkin’s command of light, colour and composition shines. It’s an EDM video from an artist who is appreciative of the innate elation that comes with repetitive rhythmic progression, which is paired masterfully with something else that provides feelings of innate elation: the natural world. Additionally, the majority of the video is shot on 16mm film. I was fortunate enough to catch a Q&A with Mark Jenkin when he visited the Shelley Theatre in Bournemouth for a special screening of Bait. His justification as to why he chooses to shoot the way he does is refreshingly uncomplicated and simple and is largely about the personality that the format provides.
2. Jay-Z -Marcy Me (dir. Ben and Joshua Safdie, 2017)
Foundations lain by their first major breakthrough with the Robert Pattison-led Good Time and further cemented with their hugely popular Uncut Gems, brother/director duo the Safdie Brothers have firmly grounded themselves as New York auteur staple-names. From the way they present themselves in interviews and articles, it’s difficult to picture the Safdie Brother’s creating anything inauthentic. Their catalogue of films spans intimate and diverse societies and subcultures of modern American living. Their ability to integrate with just about anyone is further exemplified here in their video for Jay-Z’s Marcy Me. Here, they take their signature wide-framed, surveillance-esque mode of shooting to the literal highest level as they take to the skies in an NYPD helicopter. The gorgeous visuals of the night-time skyline show off the city lights as distant yet lively splodges of colour, fluctuating in size and shape. The video goes deeper than this fantastic surface-level imagery, however, as the context is fuelled by racial indifference, in particular, the constant monitoring of the primarily black neighbourhood Jay-Z grew up in by primarily white police officers. Yet, despite the racial under and overtones, Jay-Z insists that the tune is more about being mindful and ambitious; you could interpret the helicopter searchlight as a spotlight, with the young boy running errands in the streets being the centre stage talent. It’s about recognising and appreciating where you’ve come from and basking in the nostalgia of those moments where everything seems to align and make perfect sense and that your dreams are attainable. The video reciprocates this outlook and feels vastly authentic, no doubt aided by the fact that it was shot on location in an actual helicopter in flight. The Safdie’s excel in making nothing seem staged, with Marcy Me being a vital addition to their canon of work.
3. Radiohead – Daydreaming (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2016)
Paul Thomas Anderson is the master of orchestrating grand cinematic moments in a wonderfully understated manner. Despite being one of the most treasured writer/directors alive, PTA doesn’t possess an obvious visual or stylistic motif that makes his versatile work immediately recognisable as his own. In a previous essay on his distinct yet diverse auteur characteristics, I described his directorial methods as seldom not dissimilar to a nature documentary, as though everything captured on camera was by relative chance, like the camera is being forced to think on its feet and spontaneously keep up with the unprecedented actions by the characters. The camera rarely gets involved and instead partakes from varying distances, observing. You cannot help but feel as though in each of his films, an entire world is in full swing just outside the peripherals of the camera. This same atmosphere is exemplified here in the video he directed for Radiohead’s Daydreaming, along with a strong and fitting dreamlike ambience. Implementing both PTA and Radiohead’s mutual abilities to integrate comfortably into an environment or atmosphere unassumed, this wonderful video is as elusive as the song, which constantly hesitates to land on a closed note. Anderson’s camerawork here is aggressive; it’s constantly following and pushing in on frontman Thom Yorke as he wanders through familiar yet ambiguous locations through an unending network of doors, leading him from laundrette to home, and then to more extraordinary environments such as the climactic snowy mountains where Yorke resides. A sense of wonder is encapsulated in the climax to this fantasy-like video. The breath-taking landscape at the end of the video is given only three or four shots, of which PTA only provides glimpses of. The result is a perfect, dreamlike aura where what focus isn’t drawn much attention to where you’d expect at all, effortlessly emitting a strange sense of belonging and juxtaposing uncertainty. Radiohead and PTA collaborated on several other projects, including two fantastic stripped back live performances and Junun, a documentary feature film with frequent collaborator and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood set in India.
4. Red Hot Chili Peppers – Under the Bridge (dir. Gus Van Sant, 1992)
At a glance, trying to guess which renowned director was behind the 90’s-drenched Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Under the Bridge video, you probably wouldn’t have guessed Gus Van Sant anytime soon. The acclaimed filmmaker behind classics such as Good Will Hunting, My Own Private Idaho and Elephant started out as a video-short maker for major players in the music industry, including Elton John, David Bowie and more. His intense and stylistic attributes in those aforementioned films are almost non-existent in this music video which instead takes a more ethereal and experimental depiction of the song’s atmospheric qualities, utilising a dynamic range of effects and layered, colourful imagery. The result is another memorable video in the band’s iconic filmographic canon which still holds up today through it’s vibrant and intense colour scheme and implementation of mixed media. Through clashing imagery and no single set visual style comes a pure and cohesive product which is symbolic of the band members, a wonderful ensemble of individuality and pure style. It’s also not the only time the director and band have collaborated; Van Sant had also photographed the members for their iconic Blood Sugar Sex Magik album cover.
5. Nine Inch Nails – Came Back Haunted (dir. David Lynch, 2013)
David Lynch is a filmmaker who is no stranger to the music industry, as are Nine Inch Nails a band no stranger to films. The Nails frontman Trent Reznor had collaborated with Atticus Ross and David Fincher to score The Social Network and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, whilst Lynch had released several of his own albums, his first being in 2001. It’s not hard to see how the two artistic entities gel. Both are frequently labelled with the terms dark, industrial, progressive, scary, among other gloomy descriptive terms, so a direct collaboration is no surprise (although Reznor and Lynch did collaborate on his 1997 film Lost Highway). The video is every bit as unnerving and anxiety-inducing as you’d expect, and the epilepsy-and-seizure warning at the start is put into full effect immediately. Lynch, who began his venture into the arts as a mixed media artist, utilises many forms in Came Back Haunted, featuring a trippy recurrent sequence of one of his paintings being subject to severe glitch-like editing, flitting VFX, model-making and of course, video. The culmination of Reznor’s profile which seems like it may as well have been filmed handheld on a rollercoaster, mixed with ambiguously sculpted faces will leave you with many questions, the foremost four being, “what actually is that?”, “that’s like, definitely not a real thing that exists is it?”, “is it possible to erase things from your memory?” and “do you mind if we sleep with the lights on tonight?”
6. Ice Cube – It Was a Good Day (dir. F. Gary Gray, 1992)
A universally shared acclaim of music videos is their ability to engage nostalgia. Rarely do other media products encapsulate so much energy from an era into a clip so short, granting decades worth of era-familiarity into three to four minutes. One strikingly nostalgic music video comes from Ice Cube and his much-loved hip hop anthem It Was A Good Day. For some reason, even to those of us who have never engaged with US gangsta rap culture, spending the perfect day in South Central L.A with Cube is an immersive and nostalgic experience. An orange sunset-drenched aura sets the backdrop for the day, placing the district in a constant golden-hour sunset. The video portrays Cube’s lyrics that tell the story of his great day, which is equally comic and playful (finally getting with a girl he’s been longing for in detail) as it is a sombre reminder of political injustice and gang warfare (not being pulled over by the police and not having any of his friends die today). It Was a Good Day possesses a loveable home-video style too, which emits an aura of authenticity to the video. Director F. Gary Gray worked with Cube again two years later for his directorial debut Friday and then again in 2015 for the Oscar-nominated Straight Outta Compton which starred Cube’s son O’Shea Jackson Jr.
Image Credit: Pinterest
Reference List:
- Bait (dir. Mark Jenkin, 2019)
- Good Time (dir. Benny and Josh Safdie, 2017)
- Uncut Gems (dir. Benny and Josh Safdie, 2019)
- Junun (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2015)
- The Social Network (dir. David Fincher, 2010)
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (dir. David Fincher, 2011)
- Lost Highway (dir. David Lynch, 1997)
- Friday (dir. F. Gary Gray, 1995)
- Straight Outta Compton (dir. F. Gary Gray, 2015)
filmmish 