Hype Williams

Hype Williams

Hype Williams is an American music video and film director, born in 1790 and previously know as HYPE. Williams first displayed his work by tagging local billboards, storefronts, and playgrounds using HYPE as his grafitti tag.

Williams has created a number of music videos for many famous artists, including ‘California Love’ by 2Pac, ‘Warning’ by The Notorious B.I.G, ‘So sick’ by Neyo, ‘Rock the boat’ by Aaliyah, ‘Gold Digger’, ‘Heatless’ and ‘All of the lights’ by Kanye West, ‘No scrubs’ by TLC and many more.

Trademarks of Hype Williams signiture styles

Banners

Hype Williams uses a signature style in the vast majority of his videos, this involves placing shots in regular widescreen ratio, while a second shot is split and placed in the upper and lower bars, this is also know as using ‘banners’.Videos that use this style are ‘Diamond on my neck’ by Smitty, ‘So sick’ by Neyo, ‘Only U’ by Ashanti,‘Check on it’ by Beyonce and many more. This method is used as it allows Williams videos to be atmospheric and dynamic













 
Camera Focus












In the past 10 years, Williams has signature style combining a center camera focus on the artist or actor's body from the torso upward and a solid color background with a soft different-color light being shown in the center of the background, this is effective as it really focuses on the artist. This has been used in ‘Gold Digger’ by Kanye West, and Beyoncé's ‘Video Phone’.

Fisheye Lens

Another signature style used by Williams throughout the vast majority of his videos was the Fisheye lens which distorted the camera view around the central focus. This was used by the tandem Williams/Perez in ‘Gimme Some More’ by Busta Rhymes and ‘The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)" by Missy Elliott however it was dropped by 2003, when he experienced his lowest level of production activity since the beginning of his career as a music video director.

Auteur Theory

French film critics, most notably by Francois Truffaut, articulated auteur theory in the 1950s. The concept describes the mark of a film director in terms of thematic or stylistic consistencies, personal aesthetic vision, recurring themes, established technique, a defined view of the world and a significant degree of control over production. He suggested that this meant that the director should therefore be regarded as an auteur.

How can Hitchcock be regarded as an auteur? What was his style?

Alfred Hitchcock excelled in a variety of genres during his early British career, before moving to Hollywood in 1939. It was here he became known as the 'Master of Suspense', producing some of the most analyzed works in the history of cinema.  Hitchcock often made cameo appearances in his films, representations of the psychological and elongated suspense scenes.

The auteur theory now applies to music videos. 

Applying Goodwin's Theory to Gold Digger

When watching 'Gold Digger' by Kanye West and Jamie Foxx, I found that Goldwin's theory is used in this video, and therefore does not challenge the 6 principles.



1. The music video demonstrates genre characteristics
The genre of this music video is Hip Hop/R&B and
the conventions of the video match the genre.
The video shows a dancing scene with women
wearing near to nothing. Both rappers
 are dressed in typical  Hip/hop clothing and also bold chains.








2. The lyrics and visuals both need to match
When Kanye West raps 
'18 years, 18 years she got
 one of your kids got you for 18 years'
a little boy dressed in a red devil outfit which
may represent evil or danger.






3. The music and visuals need to match
Kanye West is represented as quite a dominating figure
 in the music video. At 2:44 the woman in the video
copies what Kanye tells her to do by doing a dance movement.







4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work (a visual style)
Kanye West had developed a motif where in most of his
music videos he wears half his shirt tucked into his trousers
and the other half out. He also has another motif where by he
does a dancing movement where he
leans back with his back facing the camera.








5. There is frequently a reference to the notion of looking (screens within screens, telescopes, etc) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body
Throughout the music video women are looked upon
in an extremely sexual manner as they are dressed in
suductive clothing throughout the video.
There are also many close- ups focusing on the womens bodies.








Intertextual reference, film, tv programmes and music videos
A media outlet is shown throughout the music video,
this is a variety of different magazines which feature
 women on the them where by the women are portrayed
as sex symbols on male magazines.

Music Video Influences

What are the three most insperational music videos for you?

Katy Perry - 'The One That Got Away'

The video was released on November 11th and is influential to me as it portrays a strong message of never taking anybody for granted as you never know when you might loose them. The video shows Katy Perry playing herself as an older woman and also flashbacks of her life when she was younger. The video overall is extremely moving.

  

Eminem - Mockingbird

The video was released in May 2004 and is extremely influential as it tells a true story. The lyrics are a personal, undisguised account of Eminem's early relationship with his wife and daughters. The video includes home videos of Eminem with his wife and daughters which make the video even more touching as it enables the viewer to imagine the story even better.

Aerosmith - I Dont Want To Miss a Thing
The video was shot in 1998. It features the band playing the song intertwined with scenes from the film Armageddon. The video is influential as unlike the other two music videos the performer who is Aerosmith is performing the song which makes the video even more eye catching.

Godwin's Theory of music videos

Andrew Goodwin believes that all music videos are based on 6 principles. Goodwin believes that these principles allows us to see trends and connections between genre and content. These features are:

1. The music video demonstrates genre characteristics

2. The lyrics and visuals both need to match

3. The music and visuals need to match

4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work (a visual style) an example of this can be Jay Z's Rock, this represents his record label which we see when he performs. The rock helps Jay to promote himself and his record label.

5. There is frequently a reference to the notion of looking (screens within screens, telescopes, etc) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.

6. Intertextual reference, film, tv programmes and music videos.

Music Video Timeline

A music video is a short film intergrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Through my research I found that over the years music videos have developed in a variety of ways, when comparing the first few music videos and also present day music videos.

In 1894, 'The Little Lost Child' by Joseph W Stern an co, sold more than two million copies of its sheet music following its promotion as the first ever illustrated song, an early precursor to the music video. The video shows a series of still images whilst live music is played in the background. This is the sheet music cover page.

From the years 1930-1959 many musical films were released, this is where songs are interwoven into the film. In 1949 'Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend' was famously performed by Marilyn Monroe in the film 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' where Monroe sings the song surrounded by well dressed men. This is one of the many best known examples of a musical film.

Another early form of music video were one-song films called "promotional clips" which were made in the 1940s for the Panoram visual jukebox. These were short films of musical selections, usually just a band on a movie-set bandstand, made for playing. Thousands of "soundies" were made, mostly of jazz musicians, but also of torch singers, comedians, and dancers.  Here is Louis Armstrong performing Dinah with his band

In 1960 the beatles were introduced. The promotional film for "Strawberry Fields Forever" was an early example of what later became known as a music video.The film featured reverse film effects, stop motion animation, jump-cuts from daytime to night-time, and The Beatles playing and later pouring paint over an upright piano.

MTV was launched in 1981. The first music video shown on MTV was The Buggles 'Video Killed the Radio Star' and the second music video shown was Pat Benatar's "You Better Run". The original purpose of MTV was to be "Music Television", playing music videos 24 hours a day, guided by on-air personalities known as VJs, or video jockeys

In 1990 Micheal Jackson and Janet Jackson released 'Scream'. Jackson and his sister Janet angrily retaliate against the media for misrepresentation to the public. The acclaimed video was shot primarily in black and white, at a cost of $7 million.

In 2005 YouTube was launched, YouTube is a video-sharing website which allows users to upload, view and share videos.

A2 Media Studies Task

The A2 task is to create a music video and ancillary tasks that involve making a digi-pack and a magazine advert. I am looking forward to using photoshop as i did not have a chance to use it last year when making the opening of my film. I am very interested in music videos in general therefore i am very excited to create and plan my own on final cut express.