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.