Music Video Director Research

All Star

Smash Mouth

2000

Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)

The Offspring

1998

I have chosen to research the music video director and current feautre film director and television producer, McG (Joseph McGinty Nichol).

The above music videos were just two of around fifty music videos directed by McG. He has now become a feature film director filming blockbuster hits such as Charlie's Angels and Terminator: Salvation.

In his music videos he has very distinctive directing style in which his motifs involve using heavy saturation and sunshine. He often uses saturated shots to leave two dominating, vibrant colours, most commonly blue and orange becuase they are aesthetically pleasing, show artistic knowledge (pairs in the colour wheel) and overall, creates a positive vibe for the audience.

Sunshine is a clear motif in his videos. He includes many lens flares with enhanced colour correction and saturates the sky (which is always cloudless) to leave a very vivid and uplifting blue.

Since his music videos were mainly late 90's to early 00's pop, he uses the genre covnention of balancing the narrative with the performance fairly equally. He has a motif within performance shots itself where he often uses a fish eye lens for added quirkyness and depth to the shot in combination with close-ups / mid close-ups of band members directly addressing the camera. This works subtly in synergy with the pace of the track and draws out the energy of the artist/group.

From analysing McG's music videos objectively I can take inspriation from his style and use of motifs since I particularly like his use of heavy saturation and sunshine. When discussing how my group and I would like to film our music video, we constantly refer back to use of lens flares and saturation to accentuate colour and energy as much as possible.