Tuesday, 27 September 2011

Auteur Theory

In this I am going to research a music director, and the themes which they use in their work. Michele Bay is a Hollywood film director, music director and also used to be in advertising, creating adverts and such. This is where he started in his career, from advertising, to music video directing to a Hollywood movie director. For each of his chosen career paths his work has been very successful and has had good responses.




ABOVE IS A REVIEW OFF MICHAEL BAY'S EARLY MUSIC VIDEOS AND DIRECTING. THIS ARTICLE DESCRIBES BAY'S WORK AS 'OUT THERE' BUT VERY GOOD.

Bay has directed music videos for musicians such as, Tina Tuner, Aerosmith and Donny Osmond. Like all directors Micheale Bay has particular techniques when directing music videos:
 A strong narrative structure appears in a lot of his music videos, a good example of this is Meatloaf’s video ' I Would Do Anything for Love'. The narrative behind the video is a love story about man who loves a woman. Bay takes the phrase ' I would do anything for love' and very artistically shows the passion of the meaning. Audiences attention is grabbed from the very beginning, the location, props, costume and make-up all make the video interesting and worth watching.

 This video turns a simple saying ' I would do anything for love' and illustrates beautifully and artistically the passion behind the saying. The story line is about who is in love, and would do anything, but not one thing. Enigma is instantly arisen as to what it is the man would not do. The collaboration locations, variety of shots & camera angles, make up & costume all make a brilliant video. The video is packed with different themes, action, romance, magic and seduction, he is able to make this collaboration work well. 

ROMANCE: Love story of a man and women, the contrast between the two entices the audience. The female is beautiful and elegant; she is dressed in a white dress which symbolises purity and good. However, the man is dark and mysterious; he is wearing a black cloak and has strange marks on his face, as if not human. The dark colours symbolising evil.

ACTION: There is a fair amount of action in this video for a 'love story', the movie starts off with a police chase, and a car is driven through a brick wall into the house the man drove to. The house is dark and gloomy; it could be passed as an old church or a haunted house. There is a contrast again here as the original location of the women was calm and bring, there was trees and flowers in the back ground. The director’s use of shots and camera positions all add to the intensity of the scene when the man is watching the women from the woods.

SEDCTION: Seduction & sexuality is a trademark of the director, in many of his videos has seductive or sexy scenes appear. Normally in the terms of the admiration of the female form. A scene in this video is of a lesbian love scene which happens in the house where the man is, the female followed his here. Some critics called this scene 'random' and assumed it was just a sexual scene to illustrate his style. However, I believe this could be more than random. Throughout the film, the women has been represented as pure and good, and the man as bad, it could be more than a coincidence that when she goes into his house that the women engages in such an activity.

MAGIC: The make-up of the male portrays him as not exactly human; he has long dark fingernails like a witch, and unusual markings on his face. There are other things in the video that suggests the man had powers beyond mortal extent. A scene is show of him surrounded by lit candles in a room, this use of props gives a mystical feeling, in the same scene the man looks into a cup and see's the women, moving, looking around as she is in real life. The man makes things move in the movie without touching them, a chair moves across the room and a bed floats into the air with the women on it.




After watching other music videos directed by Michael Bay i have noticed other conventions which he uses. His use of lighting and colour is apparent; he particularly likes to use black and white colours and flashing lights. He uses a wide range of shots and angles.

No comments:

Post a Comment