Music Video Director

PR Brown

PR Brown is a photographer, director and graphic designer and has directed many music videos covering many genres, but mainly rock. His recent work includes Murderdolls' "My Dark Place Alone" and Stone Sour's "Say You'll Haunt Me". His style is extremely individualistic and arty incoporating the use of graphics in his work. A lot of it is underground videos only featuring on very specific music channels but he has also done more commercial work such as the latest Bond Theme for Jack White and Alicia Keys in which he used the iconic Bond image to advertise the film and then manipulating it for his own use.



A common technique he uses is green screens:

Jack White and Alicia Keys
Murderdolls

Prince

Audioslave

These are all completely green screen without the use of any other setting. However, another one of my favourite techniques he has used was in Stone Sour's "Say You'll Haunt Me". There is a running narrative in the video which follows the theme of the song. In one section he places the various band members standing around in black suits, guarding the vocalist who is forced to sit in a chair. Over them is projected the band members playing their instruments in grainy flickering film.



His style of dark settings, graphics and green screen is very unique in music videos.

There is some deviation from this norm in videos such as John Mayer's "Half My Heart" which follows a strong narrative with no special effects and Slipknot's "Sulfur" which is mainly the band playing with some artistic camera shots. However, they still follow a fairly dark theme with the music and masks of Slipknot themselves creating an atmosphere whereas "Half My Heart" is set in a dingy bar and a church with dull colours and a generally grey colour scheme including the singer's skin which is very pallid and white.



Even the videos he has created using only the band playing live have his own unique talent incorporated. He mixes backstage footage and live footage to create a sense of the band and who they are which usually amounts to something fun and frisky, whether using effects in Motley Crue's "Sick Love Song" or just documenting the Sixx A.M: project with dates and places of their shows in "Tomorrow".

Music Video Analysis - "One" Metallica

"One" - Metallica



This is heavy rock band, Metallica's "One". The song is based on the anti-war book "Johnny Got His Gun" by Dalton Trumbo. The video is simply footage of the band playing in a warehouse featuring typical rockband close-ups and low angle shots interspersed and layered with clips, including audio, from the movie.



This forms strong links between the audio and visuals and is very iconic of a heavy metal band. There are also a lot of close-ups of their hands playing their instruments which is usual for this type of music video. It follows a lot of the forms and conventions of a video of its type with the added movie clips included to give the song its full meaning.

The movie clips are sometimes colour and sometimes in black and white when focusing on the man in the hospital bed. To compliment this the band playing are also filmed in black and white to tie it all nicely together.

Music Video Analysis - "Weapon of Choice" Fatboy Slim

Fatboy Slim - "Weapon of Choice"



This is Fatboy Slim's video for "Weapon of Choice". The song itself is a complicated array of samples but the video is essentially very simple. It features only actor Christopher Walken and shows him tap dancing around a hotel.

The video opens with three shots of Walken sitting alone looking old and depressed. They cut from to the other getting closer to him. The only sound is the distant hums of a vacumn cleaner.



The music slowly starts up, coming from a radio on the cleaner's cart, getting louder and louder in time with the cleaner and Walken slowly comes to life with it, lifting up his head, looking around and moving slightly in time with the music. As it progresses he stands up looking quite ill but suddenly the music hits his peak and he comes to life.



He then proceeds to tap dance around the hotel.

The meaning of the song is hard to define but the ideas are definately lifted from Frank Herbert's 1965 novel, "Dune". Therefore, there appears to be no connection between the lyrics and visuals apart from the line directly taken from the novel "Walk without rhythm/It won't attract the worm", except that the dance is especially rhythmic at this point. Apart from this, Walken does tap in time with the music.

The only person featuring in the video is Walken. Fatboy Slim, himself, rarely does appear in his videos, further removing any connections with the artist. However, the enjoyment that appears to eminating from both the singer, Bootsy Collins, and Walken provide a great sense of fun.




What makes this video particularly interesting is the simplicity of it right up until about 3 minutes into it when Walken leaps over a railing and flies around the lobby providing the only special effects.



The whole video is fun, frisky and full of life. This somehow makes a great representation of the artist without even including him.

Music Video Analysis - "Life is Beautiful" Sixx A.M:

"Life if Beautiful" Sixx: A.M.



This is "Life is Beautiful" by Sixx: A.M. from the Album "The Heroin Diaries". Sixx: A.M. includes the bassist and lyricist of 80s hard rock band, Motley Crue, Nikki Sixx. He recently published a year of his diaries with the same title as the album. The album features as a soundtrack for the book of his worst time as a heroin addict. "Life is Beautiful" probably evokes the most emotion of all the songs included.

The book, album cover and video all feature the same artwork which was designed, and the video directed, by graphic artist and director PR Brown (who went on to direct the rest of their music videos and their upcoming new ones).



This already makes for strong bonds and themes running throughout the whole of the Sixx: A.M. project.

The video itself comprises of the band playing the song in, what appears to be, a dingy studio setting. This simple setting comes to life as it is converted to a high contrast black and white with the layers of images and brushes placed on top, beneath and, sometimes, interacting with the band.

There is a heavy relationship between the lyrics and visuals right from beginning to end. The first piece of footage features Nikki Sixx quoting from his book, "There's nothing like a trail of blood to find your way back home." which later form the first line of the second verse.



The line even appears scrawling across him as he says them on top of layers of rusty coloured stains and red blood splotches forming a "trail of blood". This immediately sets up a very literal connection.

The title of the song, however, at first sight appears to contradict both the song and the video as the images in the video are far from beautiful, as are the lyrics. They are dirty, bloody and dingy but, with the song title and chorus, portray the deeper meaning to it that Nikki Sixx discovered that "life is beautiful" when he was down in the dirt of his sordid life.

There are a lot of close ups and medium close ups used as well as an array of different angles, particularly low angle shots, iconic of rock bands. However, the camera doesn't continuously focus mainly on the singer, which is normal for a rock music video. The bassist, where all the material and emotion originated from, is, in himself, an iconic rock figure. Therefore, he gets a fair bit of camera time as well as the singer.

The editing has been done in a very interesting way. The camera will focus on one member of the band for several seconds but the transitions are sharp and fast making it all seem very disjointed and jerky. To coincide with this, the footage itself is fast-paced but the images on top are animated move at different speeds. Sometimes with the music/footage and sometimes completely independently.



This music video is highly between visuals and lyrics as well as other areas and employs simple techniques to make for a great music video.

A2 Induction Animation Video

This is our A2 animation induction project. We took 20 seconds from the song "Guest List" by the Eels to animate photoshop files too. Having already done a music video using animation of photoshop files I was keen to learn a few more things with Adobe Premiere.

This is the main new thing I learnt; how to pivot an image.
I also learnt how to decrease the size of an image in the video.

ABC Video Induction Project

This is our first A2 transition project. We went around the college filming letters (or objects which resembled letters) to put to a track singing the alphabet.

This was a fun and interesting little project as it involved having to crop a lot of the pieces of film down to a second or less to fit. I also learnt a few more little things about editing the video such as these effects:


Multiplying the image.
Adjusting colour balance levels.
Blurring the image.












It was a really fun but useful activity.

A2 Transition Video - Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now

For our A2 transition project we chose The Smiths' "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now". We decided to do a very simple video of someone singing the song on a bench looking depressed and animate cartoon images on top of this layer. We filmed medium close up and close up as well as short extra shots for interaction with the cartoons as show below:



We edited the main layer of video to black and white to contrast with the bright colours of the cartoons.

The idea was that the song has a running theme of negatives and positives and the good to bad. This was reflected in the sad, lonely, grey figure surrounded by happy, bright cartoons.

This was the first time I had ever used Adobe Premiere and I learnt a lot of completely new skills from making the video. Everything from simply positioning the video and music in good timing, video transitions, altering the video to black and white and changing the contrast and, of course, animation.