CF: Auteur analysis

Auteur analysis

Spike Jonze is a music video and film director/producer and occasionally is an actor in his own work. He started his career by directing commercials for large companies such as Ikea and Adidas. He then began to direct and produce music videos for artists such as ‘Beastie boys’ and ‘Weezer’. He then began to direct short and feature length films such as “Being John Malkovich” (1999) and “Adaption” (2002) with both earning Oscar nominations and the latter winning one. In more recent times, he has directed music videos for artists such as Jay-Z, Kanye West, Bjork and Tenacious D. He is known for his quirky approach to all his work, with the likes of Christopher Walken in the video he directed for ‘Fatboy Slim’ where his erratic dance moves became recognisable. He is known for his use of different eras and themes being incorporated into his works.

Weezer - Buddy Holly

• The use of the iconic 1950’s theme is recognisable and vintage and will be enjoyed by the younger audience, due to the way in which it portrays this era in a comical way. At times, due to the exaggerated manner of this theme, it comes across as a form of parody, while at other times, it seems to be closer to pastiche.
• A number of medium close-ups are used in order to both bring prevalence to the musicians skills with their instruments, and attempt to maybe build their brand, by making their faces more recognisable, it also emplores the audience to recgonise the artists skill with their instruments.
• This video in specific is one of the few performance-based music videos that Spike Jonze has directed; it used the 1950’s period as a source of entertainment and puts a twist onto this video, this era was also made very in conic from the musical film ‘Grease’ (Kleiser, 1978).
• The era portrayed may be a reference to the man in the title of the song- Buddy Holly whose career was at its peak in the 1950’s shortly before his death in 1959. 

Sabotage – Beastie Boys

• The entire production is full of high-paced camera techniques are shots to fit in with the energetic theme of the car chase and the iconic 80’s American cop chasing criminals. Examples of these shots are the 360 degree pans which only endure for about 1 second. Almost all shots last for a maximum of 2 seconds, and many of these include extremely fast zooms and pans to tie in with the energetic theme.
• Intertextuality and references to popular media are almost the basis for the entire music video. The characters in this video generally resemble characters from the easily recognisable American cop shows of the 1980’s, the over emphasised and extreme characteristics of these shows used in this music video, such as the use of aviators and moustaches create comic value, almost making the music video a parody. Other popular references include the use of the bright red siren light, and the idea of cops eating doughnuts which is a stereotype amongst the theme of American cop shows.
• Another example of parody in this music video is the very common use of pans and zooms, which are overused to the extent that it also provides comic value, while reinforcing the idea of the video being a form of parody, rather than paying homage to the concept of iconic 80's cop shows.
  

Arcade fire – The suburbs

• This music video, like many of Jonze’s other work, conveys a youthful lifestyle. This video does so by conveying different activities such as cycling, pestering people of the public and defacing public property.
• The video generally conveys a major contrast between the lifestyle of a young person and that of an adult who will have more responsibility; firstly, the younger people are shown to not have jobs and instead are simply finding ways to kill time, while almost every adult in this music video is uniformed. This shows that they have responsibility and have to work, example are the police officers, the restaurant workers and the soldiers.
• Tracking shots are used in this video in the scenes when the characters are cycling, the use of tracking enables the director to exaggerate the length of road that the characters are cycling down, which cements the idea that the young people have no responsibility, as to cycle down such a long road would clearly be time consuming.
• Enigma is used in this music video, a wide shot towards the end of the video shows a helicopter going towards a war explosion, this scene resembles a war zone, but whether or not these characters are living near a war zone remains uncertain.

Sonic youth – 100%

• This entire music video is comprised of two separate narratives, this are separated through the use of cross cutting.
• One of these videos shows a boy going to a party, it is told from a subjective point of view, as it follows his journey along the street then shows where he goes when within the party, this helps develop character exposition.
• The second narrative that is told also shows a large aspect of the youthful lifestyle, as it shows a group of skateboards skating through a city, a rather rebellious persona is conveyed from this second narrative. Unlike the party scenes, the skateboarding scenes are shot in black and white, which simply creates a major contrast between these two separate scenes.
• This music video is also performance based, as within the party scenes, the band performing is Sonic Youth themselves performing the track. This enables the audience who will generally be comprised of younger people to relate to the track, as it is likely that many of the viewers will regularly or sometimes attend live performances, so viewing the track being performed like this may help them to relate to it.

Goodwin writing frame; Y control - Yeah Yeah Yeahs

When considering the key features of a music video, Andrew Goodwin, dancing in the distraction factory (1992) identified a number of conventions which can be applied to the music video ‘Y control’ by Yeah Yeah Yeahs directed by Spike Jonze in 2004.
Firstly, he stated that music videos demonstrate genre characters. This video could be categorised as being in the indie genre. It is conventional in that its narrative conveys characters and scenes which do not comply with social norms, and instead, go against these norms. The narrative of this music video shows a party/gathering taking place in what appears to be an abandoned warehouse/room. Excluding the artists who do appear in this video, the almost all of the characters are young children. When children feature in music videos, the norm is to show them as innocent, alternatively, in this music video, we see children who have lost their innocence, and partake in a number of loathing activities, such as small girls wielding weapons like hammers and bats, and a small boy is shown to be wrestling with a dog to the death. These scenes resemble the shock-horror genre of movies, where things which are appalling to see are used to simply grip the audience, as an interest may be sparked due to it’s uniqueness.
             
           Secondly, iconography is also a conventional aspect of this music video. The appearance created by various aspects of mise en scene (predominantly costume) allows the audience to recognise the director’s intention to portray ‘disturbed children’ in this video. A very typical image of what such a child would appear like has become dominant over recent decades, with film productions such as the psychological feature, ‘The Shining’ (Kubrick, 1980) where the two small twin girls who have a paranormal existence are first seen. The children in this music video have a similar appearance, in that they are pale, show no emotion, and are wearing clothes from periods of the past. This is a form of intertexuality, and allows the audience to relate to the music video with references to horror films. This is conventional of a music video in the indie genre, as music videos from this genre often contain intertextuality, as the term indie is an abbreviation of independent. The actual concept of indie music, is for the audience to be able to relate to the musicians, and one way for the artist’s to do this is to find a common ground or mutual interest, in this video, it is horror movies. It is very rare to find the same method in other genres of music, the artists of which may be more corporate, and will less commonly write their own songs.
             
             Thirdly, the camera techniques in this music video are absolutely conventional of camera techniques used in music videos within the indie genre as a whole.  Indie music video productions often have less budget than corporate artists, and as a result, their music  videos may often result looking like this one (Y control - Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The first example of this is the way in which  this music video is shot in a lower resolution than you would find in most contemporary music videos, this is done to achieve a DIY look on the music video which may imply lower production values and a lower budget. A second example of an aspect relating to camera techniques which is conventional of an indie music video, is that most of the shots in this video are handicam shots which again, imply that this music video has been made with lower production values, a music video from a more mainstream genre of music, would be less likely to consist of handicam shots, as a higher budget would mean that equipment such as tripods or tracks and dollies. However, the director may purposely be using these more amateur techniques to emphasize the point, that this song is from the indie genre.
                   
         Lastly, the cutting rate of this song is customary of music videos, of which the song originates from the indie genre. The cutting rate of this song is noticeably slower than the majority of songs from other genres like pop and rock. In many indie songs with a slow cutting rate, there is often a purpose of the use of not cutting to different shots very often. In this video, it may been to allow the audience to properly see the shocking images that this music video projects, and let these rather traumatic pictures be absorbed by their minds.

          This video employs an artistic/creative approach to the conventions it contains, in that at times within the video (predominately the chorus), these conventions are reversed. An example of this is the use of the small cadaverous children, who during the chorus of the track, are shown to be celebrating and appear to be more energetic than what the typical corpselike children are conveyed to be like in many popular media texts such as films. Another example of the reversal of these techniques, is the cutting rate being significantly increased at the chorus where the track and the artists themselves are shown to be more energetic, rather than resembling the corpselike children. The purpose of the reversal of the these techniques and conventions is to simply create a clear juxtaposition between the verses of the track which are idle and lethargic.
   
            Goodwin discussed the relationship between lyrics and visuals. In relation to ‘Y control’ by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, it is clear that there is a relationship between these two aspects. Throughout the duration of the track, a number of references to age are made. Examples of these references include “Well I’m just a poor little baby” and “while your growing old”, these two references do contrast, in that one is about adolescence and the other is about growing old, these lyrics are reinforced by the use of the children in the video who at times exhibit more cynical adult behaviour (such as NV language like putting up their middle fingers to the camera), and at other times, appear more like children. However, during the sequence during the final lines of the track, one of the lyrics is “out of control”, there is clearly a direct link between this line and the what goes on in the music video at this point, for when this line is sang, the zombie like children are visible, and a common ideology concerning zombies is that they lose ascendancy of their bodies, this is simply a personification of the lyrics, which just cements the ideas that the audience are likely to have during this sequence from listening to the track.
   
          Goodwin made references to the notion of looking. In ‘Y control’ by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, at times, visible to the audience, is a path created by two walls of the young children (all of whom are cursing at the camera using NV language), the camera then goes down this figurative path, then the end of this ‘path’ is blocked off by the leader singer of the band, who is shown to be looking straight at the audience (by looking into the lens of the camera). This makes the audience almost feel as if they are cut off from the real world, and instead, are trapped in this clearly abdicated environment, with the children and the artist as company. This greatly increases the figurative prevelance of the artists themselves.
   
             Importantly, Goodwin talked about the voyeuristic treatment of the body. In this music music video, there is voyeuristic treatment of the female lead singer. The main way in which this is achieved is through costume (mise en scene), the dress which she is shown to be wearing a very high-cut dress, which does not conceal much of her lower body. At times in the song when her performances is more energetic, her underwear is visible, which is voyeuristic as many may viewers may find something sexual about this.

               Music videos are a post modern form, which implies that they often borrow and rework ideas from other texts and forms. ‘Y control’ by Yeah Yeah Yeahs uses intertextuality in the form of pastiche. The most dominant characters in this music video are the small children who have a eidolon persona, as I have previously mentioned, these children do resemble the iconic look of possessed children. The typical image of a possessed child has featured in a number of media texts, but most notably is ’The Shining’ (Kubrick, 1980) where this image was arguably first created. Many media texts often use intertextuality and refer to this in the form of parody of pastiche, but throughout this music video, it could be argued that the director (Jonze) has used it as both). At points in this music video, the children are viewed as intimidating and serious, such as when they are standing in a stationary manner whilst wielding weapons, while at others time, the children who are still in a haunted manner, are shown to be dancing and celebrating and exhibiting behaviour of contemporary youthful people, such as using Non-verbal language to curse. The fact that both pastiche and parody have been used, honours the original use of where the referenced image originates from, it also achieves the desired effect of creating a horror aspect within the music video, then the parody reference gives the music video a slightly more light-hearted and energetic persona.