Case study

Richard ayoade Music Director

Richard Ayoade an English musical director but also is known for being a comedian, actor, writer. As a musical director he isn't the most well known one but is known in high regards by many English bands, particularly indie one's. He was born in Whipps cross, London. He is probably best known for an ongoing part he plays in IT Crowd which is a British comedy. He has been involved in the music director scene fro a few years now and has been getting a lot of praise for his work. He doesn't seem to have a big budget in the video's he directs but puts his own twist on them. A person he is very good friends with is Alec Turner, someone who is well known for being in world famous band Artic Monkeys and Last Shadow Puppets. Although they are friends it is mainly work friends and it is clear they hire Richard for is Music Directing qualities rather than because they know him. He has done about 10-15 mainstream videos in his very short career but with his creative ideas and imagination he is being tipped to be one of the brightest music directors in England. That is the main reason I chose him as I didn't want just a boring Director who is giving hundreds of thousands of pounds and basically told what to do with it. So I wanted an unknown director who solely does all his work on his own and doesn't get told what to do.

These are two videos that Richard did recently, they were for two indie bands, Vampire Weekend and Kasabian and although the song's are quite different and the main concept of the videos are different. There are similarities though for example they both have the first shot focus on just one guy, in this case they have an actor for the Kasabian video but he is the main actor. Also a recurring feature Richard Ayoade has is his videos are shot in the countryside, not only with these videos but with others he has done. He really seems to use the lyrics in his video's but with saying that in the Vampire Weekend video there is miming throughout, unlike the Kasabian video. The one thing that fascinates me is his work with Vampire Weekend because they are an American band based there, and they have asked him to do two of there videos so they obviously have him in high regards.

These are just a couple of clips from the video by Artic Monkey's which was directed by Richard Ayoade. I chose to put this in there because where it is set it a similar sort of place to where I want our music video to be placed. Its a deserted industrial estate and with a river going along side it. How my video is I really would like it to be set on a location like this because there won't be anyone around there so I won't have to worry about people walking in my shots. Also it fits my storyline very well because if it wasn't in an industrial estate it wouldn't really make sense. Ayoade has worked with this band several times and is good friends with the lead singer Alex turner. There a huge band so obviously they think of Ayoade in high demand. In fact he directed there tour they did at the Apollo in 2009 and this actually won them award for there tour video.

Once again I thought I would look at this video by Kasabian because I think it is very relevant to my video that I will be making. Mainly because as you can see on the top left it is a man chasing a women in a field and although it not the same location it is exactly the same idea. Although not completely the same the basics are. Again at the bottom the same man is cornering someone and has forced him onto the floor because he has tripped. In my video production I have that exact same scene so I would like to think that I take a lot of inspiration from Richard's work than I thought. The one big difference from my video to this one is clearly that he has not got the band in it at all. Which is very unusual because a record label will always want there act in the video but with saying that Kasabian have clearly decided to let Richard do what he wants to do and it works really well. The lighting is great and I also really like the camera work because it looks like a lens he's looking through and it's hand held

Yeah Yeah Yeahs heads will roll

Super Furry Animals run away

The Last Shadow Puppets- my mistakes were made for you

These are just a number of recent videos that Richard has worked on. In the Super Furry Animals videos Richard has used his connexions in the acting world to get his colleague Matt Berry star in the video. Also in the Last Shadow Puppets one he has a famous model Alexa Chung staring, so he is able to get people with a big persona even though not much money is available.