Auteur Theory

'The Auteur theory was introduced in the 1950’s by French film directors like Francois Truffaut who advocated a focus on the contribution directors made on the style and form of film, he said:

“A true film auteur is someone who brings something genuinely  personal to his subject instead of producing a tasteful, accurate but lifeless rendering of the original material” This theory holds that a film's director is its “author” (French, auteur).

An auteur is a film maker whose style and practise is distinctive which creates a signature auteur status for them. It is also a film maker who has a personal, signature style and keeps creative control over his or her work.
Making any film or in this case a music video the director is the auteur but it would not be possible for them to create the whole production on their own, instead they collaborate with others and team up with; writer, cinematographer and actors but the director is still an auteur in a sense as they control everyone and everything in the production. Supporters maintain that the most successful films bear the distinctive imprint of their director and that an auteur would place a significant visual style that would be visible throughout their work.  An example of a music video auteur is Chris Cunningham. Chris Cunningham is a British music video film  director and video artist. Cunningham is known for his warped style and disturbing imagery, he has worked and produced music videos for the likes of; Aphex Twins, Bjork, Placebo and  Madonna.'

Samuel Bayer

Director Samuel Bayer has been director for many music videos of the alternative rock genre such as videos for green day, my chemical romance, blink 182 and good charlotte, he has also directed horror film 'nighmare on elm street'. Bayer is an American  Visual artist, cinematographer, commercial, music video and filmdirector. I have been analysing some of his music videos and found

 

I have seen in both of these videos that Bayer tends you use hand held camera in a close up shot in order to make the visual become more messy. This may reflect the genre of the music as being rock/punk music a sense of chaos and disruption can be connoted through the use of a hand held camera. I have also noticed that there are a lot of fast cuts, this is because the songs themselves are quite fast paced, and this also creates that busy, wreckless feel to the video and moreover creates a typical camera movement and identity to Bayers videos.

 

 

We also see elements of live performance within his videos, this is because he focuses a lot on rock, indie and heavy metal genres, therefore live performances are a key convention of these particular genres.

 

 

In these screen grabs we can see that Bayer has used monochromatic colouring inside a television. This ages the video as the television in both music videos is small, square and has a curved screen. This also adds the effect of the genre as rock and heavy metal music is an old genre and acts originally, not to please the majority of the population, unlike pop music, but focuses more on the expression within the song and the band.

 

Occasionally Bayer uses short facts to open the music video, this is something which I would like to take as influence from Bayer, as the harsh statistics is what enhances the emotion and reality within alternative rock videos such as those in the above images.

Bayer also uses a low saturation to create a pale feel to his videos, this makes them become more gothic, which may be because rock and heavy metal music is linked to death and darkness.