Music Video Director Case Study

Just some contextual research for my planning.

Jonas Akerlund Basic Bio:
• Born in 1965 -56 years old
• He has a son called Elvis and a daughter called Mini.
• Between 1983-1984 he was a drummer in a Swedish band called Bathory.
• He is a director known for his pornographic music videos such as Telephone – Lady Gaga featuring Beyonce and Hold it against me by Britney Spears as well as other controversy themes such as drug use and violence.


Music Video Work
• He has directed a lot of Madonna’s work. Ray of Light won a Grammy award for best music video short form. Other videos he directed were American Life and Celebration.
• This attracted some of his more recent work like Britney Spears- Hold it against me. This video shows her with little clothing, it’s very fast paced and includes loads of different effects. The video is set in space and very surreal. The video provides us with lots of colour.
• Lady Gaga featuring Beyonce “Telephone” also uses lots of colour and the women are dressed in almost nothing.
• David Guetta featuring Rihanna –includes scenes of space at the beginning and includes lots of colour.
• Christina Aguilera-Beautiful is a big contrast to the music videos above. This video includes very dull colour and disturbing scenes such as a anorexic girl and a girl getting beaten up.


Other work
• His short film ‘Spun’ made it into the Guinness book of records for having over 5000 different edits.
• “Try” another short film about a couple of drug addicts who are homeless received a review saying “It was a brilliant film but incredibly depressing to watch.”
• Commercials include – Dior “the iconic lipstick” and other designers such as D&G featuring attractive well known women like Kate Moss.


Accounts of their style
He likes to use a lot of colour in his videos which make the video really fun and interesting to watch. It is also noticed that he uses split screen and uses writing to introduce his video.
He also enjoys using lots of effects which also contributes to making his music videos fun and wacky. None of the videos I watched other than the Christina Aguilera video, Beautiful were normal.