Spike Jonze and the Directors Label Series.

While film has long discussed the presence of the auteur, a music video aspect shows a new but contradicting approach. The Series Directors Label that Palm Pictures introduced in the early days of the 2000s, was mainly the core factor in the development of music video auteur. Besides music videos that included short films, commercials, and others, these collections were the major captivating style that made the music video directors lead the project as the creative minds. The use of such extensive content is a showcase of directors’ vast abilities to come up with exciting formats of media.

Although the practice of auteur theory in music videos is not without its problems, it is inevitable. The music video scene, due to its innate dynamism that derives from a symbiosis between sound and image, is one of the scenarios that make it problematic to attribute the authorship of both elements to only one person. Nevertheless, the auteur concept comes in handy when discerning such directors who involve one specific creative perspective, while their style and influence get more recognizable per project.

Dvd The Work Of Spike Jonze Directors Label | Filme e Série Directors Label Usado 58312819 | enjoei

According to David Sanjek in his book The Sounds of Battle:  Music Video Culture Industry (1996) he discusses the situation of how the singers’ identities are formed through music video directors and what significance it leaves on the last line of culture. He portrays directors as the movers and shakers behind the aesthetics during the production process, a new space that is collaborative. Sanjek’s argument is the better eye for selection the creators, for instance, Spike Jonze, has come to the fore in the directorial field. Even though music videos are a combined process, the visual nature and the specific style of directors’ works one the production to be recognized in different formats.

For instance, Spike Jonze comes to showcase this category of emerging auteur status within the music video industry. His most known for being inventive at storytelling, incorporating typically indie “lo-fi” and funny elements into his videos. A perfect example is his music video for Dinosaur Jr.’s “Feel the Pain,” in which it completely subverts the very expectations of the genre. The very plot of the music video works against the tone of the song and inserts absurdity into the band’s performance. That playful contrast between the visuals and music along with his signature quirky style adds up to him being viewed as more of an auteur in the music video realm.

So while the auteur label may be very difficult for music videos, it does undeniably point to the kinds of specific roles unique to such directors as Spike Jonze vis-a-vis the medium.

Sanjek, D. (1996). The Sounds of Battle: Music Video and the Culture Industry. In The Media and Popular Culture (pp. 111-125). Greg Philo (Ed.).

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Oliver Frieze