Jonathan Glazer by Sam

Information

Jonathan Glazer (born 1966 in London) is an English director of films, commercials and music videos. He has won many awards for his directed music videos and TV adverts. He has also directed two films, Sexy Beast (2000) and Birth (2004).

Music Videos

Glazer has directed many music videos including ones for artists such as, Massive Attack, Radiohead, Jamiroquai and UNKLE. He has certain themes which are noticeable across most if not all of the music videos he has directed. The themes are listed below:

Narrative Driven

All Glazer's videos are narrative driven with almost no performance shots at all, besides occasional lip-syncing in some of them. Examples of this include 'The Universal' by Blur, which shows only quick shots of the whole band and 'Karma Police' by Radiohead, which shows lip-syncing by the lead singer occasionally throughout the video. However the majority of his videos concentrate heavily on amplifying the lyrics and songs by adding further meanings, and moving away from the image of the actual band. Another key example is ‘Rabbit in your Headlights’ UNKLE. This video has no lip-syncing and the diagetic sound of the world in some places almost drowns out the actual song of the music video, almost dismissing it as not important. This demonstrates that Glazer wants the audience to concentrate more on the narrative of the video than the track playing.

Rabbit in Your Headlights

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3ClCwcCvdQ&fmt=18

Surreal

Glazer’s videos have a certain uniqueness to them and often have quite surreal elements included. Glazer can be seen as an auteur because of the connotations, negotiated readings and other possible hidden meanings behind some of the elements and themes present in his work. This also adds a lot of repeatability into the music videos, with audiences wanting to watch again to get more of an insight into what he is ‘trying to say’ in a particular sequence. An example of this is ‘Street Spirit’ by Radiohead, in which seemingly random events occur in a trailer park, in normal and slow motion, with no real ‘storyline’ or clear narrative that the music video is following. Another example is ‘Karmacoma’ by Massive Attack. This video contains many extremely surreal elements, including a posing man covered in dirt, a man playing golf in the hallway and a small man being drowned in a bath.

Street Spirit

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=nPX3u0XJzKM&fmt=18

Karmacoma

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=MGwcz_DzyyI&fmt=18

Intertextual References

Two obvious music videos that include intertextual references are ‘Karmacoma’ by Massive Attack and 'The Universal' by Blur. ‘Karmacoma’ is influenced heavily by the film ‘The Shining’, and includes key motifs from the movie such as, the twin girls, the typewriter, looking for the specific room with the number and general other surreal things that happen in the movie, shown in the music video in a new original way. ‘The Universal’ includes clear references to A Clockwork Orange, with the lead singer using similar makeup and dress to the main character from the film, Alex. The location of the performance scenes also shares resemblance to the milk bar featured at the start of the film, although in the music video, it is a regular bar.

The Universal

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=PGc2f2282NE&fmt=18

Blood

Seen in a few videos he has directed, it doesn’t play a prominent part but does feature within a lot of the frame and so is still important. Two examples can be seen in ‘Karmacoma’. Firstly a man with possibly a gun shot wound to the chest is clutching his hand on it whilst sitting down. This shot is shown a few times. As well as about ¾ of the way though a woman tilts up to look at the camera and blood drips slowly out of her nose. In ‘Virtual Insanity’ by Jamiroquai blood pouring out from under sofa chairs can be seen within the last 30 seconds of the video. And Finally in ‘Street Spirit’ by Radiohead a short cut of a man with blood pouring down his face is shown roughly a minute before the end of the video.

Virtual Insanity

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=YMMQqE9x6i4&fmt=18

TV Adverts

Sony Bravia

Balls

Two of the most well known adverts he has directed have been for the Sony Bravia TVs; the paint and the bouncy balls. Two very outstanding and original adverts based around colour with the slogan ‘Like No Other’. The ‘balls’ advert featured 250,000 real brightly-coloured rubber balls bouncing down a San Francisco street. The advert was filmed at 120fps and then played back at 30fps (over-cranking) to give a smooth slow motion effect. Every shot was done in one take with up to 23 cameramen at one time filming each shot.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9NymcQJjPCs&feature=related&fmt=18

Paint

This advert took place in a residential area in which a tower block in Toryglen in Glasgow, Scotland was covered in 70,000 litres of environmentally friendly paint with the help of over 1400 separate explosions featured as imitation fireworks. This was filmed with a crew of 250 people over a 10 day period in July 2006. It also includes a surreal moment in which a clown is shown running in slow motion towards the buildings for a brief moment.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GURvHJNmGrc&feature=related&fmt=18

Making of

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=R-NxdTdrRss&fmt=18

Guinness

He directed several Guinness adverts, the most well known one being ‘Surfer’ which has won many awards and been voted best ad of all time by Channel 4 and The Sunday Times. It features a group of surfers waiting for the perfect wave and then riding it to shore and celebrating.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ueKvBThaqR4&fmt=18

Films

Sexy Beast

This film was generally received well, with many review sites and newspapers praising it very highly. Total Film magazine named Sexy Beast the 15th greatest British film of all time and Ben Kingsley got an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. This film, like much of Glazers work, contains very surreal elements. One important one is the rabbit, seen in dream sequences and at the conclusion of the film. It is possible that it is a metaphor for an emotion, for example guilt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexy_Beast

Birth

This film was in fact not received well at all, and only just made a profit; the budget was 20mill and it grossed 23mill. There was also a lot of controversy surrounding the film, for some specific scenes that some people felt were inappropriate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_(film)

Links

http://www.palmpictures.com/film/the-work-of-director-jonathan-glazer.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Glazer
http://www.coloribus.com/focus/jonathan_glazers_best_works/