British Music Video Directors

Nick Abson - After looking through some of the videos he has made, his main style seems to be quite simplistic and minimal. For example Diana Ross' - My Old Piano and Kate Bush's - Wuthering Heights mainly focus on basic dance movements, Diana Ross dancing round a piano and Kate Bush making a more spiritual routine such as the way Florence out of Florence and the Machine dances today. One of Abson's more well known works is Queen's - We Will Rock You, which again is simplistic but also focuses of the instruments as the music is anthemic. This makes individual instruments stand out, like the part where there is a guitar solo so the only thing shown is the guitar being played in a close up shot. This is probably the easiest video to do as it is low budget and doesn't need a lot of skill to do, it also creates a clear and distinct pattern to follow through the video.

Vaughan Arnell -  He is a frequent collaborator of music artist Robbie Williams, his songs are mainly ballads and portray a high level of emotion or full of energy which are often emphasised in his videos, such as Robbie Williams - Angels (1997), Robbie Williams - Let Me Entertain You (1998) and Robbie Williams - Feel (2002). Arnell had to create videos that expressed more emotion in facial expression as to keep the video as simple as possible, this is difficult as you have to make it interesting enough so that the audience want to keep watching and want to watch it again. However Arnell's earliest music video was Dead or Alive's - You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) (1984) which was co-directed with with Anthea Benton, is still a simple video but highly effective as the movement of the lead singer Pete Burns fits in with the quirky lyrics and the camera angles fit with the chorus. There are long shots as well as close up ones so that you can see the full movement of each person, but the close ups still show alot of expression rather than emotion as the song is more upbeat.

Nick Egan - He is a visual design artist, and director of music videos, commercials and film. From the songs I already know and the ones I have looked into, his style seems to be adaptable to suit the type or artists he is working with. For instance Belinda Carlisle, at the time she was an uplifting artist, with enlightening lyrics. So naturally her videos had to be something to inspire people somehow.


Robert Hales (director) - His main style is that of pop or successful R&B music, for example Justin Timberlake's "loveStoned", but before he made the video for Craig David's "unbelievable" in 2006 Hales' main style was soft rock or rock like Stereophonics madame Helga and The Veronica's with Everything I'm Not. It seems that as people have changed their preferred type of music Robert Hales, to keep up with the rapidly changing music industry has changed his preferred style, this proved a great choice to make as he has continued to make videos and now has a wider range of music that he has worked in thus gaining him more experience, so he is adaptable to styles and has the opportunity at more work. I think that as he has changed styles his videos have become more well known not just because the music isn't as old as the others, but because they are so different from traditional video concepts, for instance Gnarls Barkley's "crazy" which has a very distinct and memorable video of ink blot pictures moving and metamorphosising into something different, so that it is something that we can recognise, like a face.

Liam Andrew Wright - He is a Film director, screenwriter, producer and directed his first feature film, Ex Cathedra, at the age of only 23. His style is mainly to do with football as he founded Banter Media in 2010 who released  Green & Gold by the Haglems in May 2010 which was supported by the Manchester United fans. They also recorded the music video for the hugely popular Manchester Hip Hop act, F.O.A.K with their song "Welcome to my City". Other than this Wright hasn't really ventured out into the music video industry, although he still has alot of time to do so and at least has some sort of music video experience.

I would say my style is mainly like Nick Abson as it is simple and low budget, also the music video I shot with Tanya uses the same simple shots like a close up on the dominant instrument, like a guitar, bass, drums or just the singer. However as I get used to this style I would at some point like to try a similar style to Robert Hales as he goes against the norms and stereotypes of a traditional music video, and puts his own mark on the video.