Jonathon Glazer

Famous Auteur

Jonathon Glazer:

• Glazer is one of the world’s leading music video directors who found fame directing Radiohead’s “Street Spirit”.

• Not only has Jonathon found fame through music videos, he also directs both television commercials and films.

• Some of his films have been Oscar nominated such as “Sexy Beast” and he is known world wide for his film “Surfer”.

• Glazer has also won MTV’s Director of the Year in 1997.

De-Saturation of Colour:• Within a number of videos shot by Jonathon Glazer, colour plays a very large and prominent

part to the trends he continues to follow in each of his productions.• In both Radiohead’s “Street Spirit” and Nick Cave’s “Into My Arms” the colour has been

drained, giving the videos a sad and depressive atmosphere: the emotions have been shown through the use of black and white editing and the use of spotlights to highlight the facial expression accentuates this atmosphere. This is an important feature to the music video as loosing the colour gives that important mood and goes perfectly with the narrative, facial expressions and body language of the characters.

• In both of these music videos low-key lighting has been used to focus on the faces of the subjects in the music video, drawing attention to the various facial expressions: by using this technique the viewer is able to relate to the emotions that are portrayed and allows them to become an active participant in the viewing process. This reflects the ‘Reception Theory’ with how the audience could react differently to the ideas being conveyed within the video and how the emotions that are being shown could influence the audiences views on the narrative within the video.

Colour:• Another way that Glazer has used colour is by only using selected colour against plain white

backgrounds as you can see in the music video “The Universal” by Blur. The colour white is played upon more then any other colour with some very bright and bold colours mixed in to draw the viewers attention in.

• This is an important aspect of the music video as it is a strong inter-textual reference to the film ‘A Clockwork Orange’. This film is based on the nihilistic society of the time and it shows an obscured and disturbing view on what the people though Britain would be like in the future. This is heavily reflected in the music video by Blur with the deranged faces of the band as they perform on a stage within the scene and the over exaggerated movements of the rest of the “audience” in the video.

• The colours red and blue are heavily played upon within the video, being the only colours apart from the complete white setting and the black tuxedos, reflecting the dangerous and sexual nature of the characters which relates back to the idea of the nihilistic society that is referenced within the video. This idea is also reflected through the materialistic views that are conveyed in the music video with the red dresses that the women wear and the desire to be in red rather then in blue.

Speed:• Along with colour, speed plays a large part in Glazer’s music videos: he plays

around with different speeds such as slow motion and extreme slow motion: bullet time, and experiments with the use of garbage mattes which creates a series of overlays within one image so a number of different speeds can be played at the same time in the same clip. This means that one character in a scene can be moving at a normal speed but another can be moving in slow motion which allows them to tell their own stories at the same time.

• A brilliant example of this is Radiohead’s “Street Spirit” where Jonathon Glazer has placed the lead singer (Thom Yorke) in the foreground where he is lip syncing the lyrics of the song at normal pace and a character in the background is doing a completely unrelated action in slow motion as a way of telling their own story.

Themes:

• The biggest recurring theme that is in Jonathon Glazer’s videos is a huge atmosphere of emotions that are accentuated by the use of colour, speed and lighting. The tension that is created within these music videos is increased by the lyrics in the video which presents the crucial link between the video and the song.