Director Case Study: Shane Drake

Shane Drake is an American Director who's experience involves directing over 50 music videos as well as co-producing three films. Early in his career, Drake spent time working as an editor and cinematographer with such bands as Poison the Well, Deftones, Thursday and many more.  He now spends most of his time directing and is the owner of red Van Pictures, a Los Angeles-based production company. 

Drake has directed videos spanning the genres of Pop, Rock, Rap and Country, He has worked on music videos for artists including Timbaland, Paramore, Kelly Clarkson, Avril Lavigne, Fall Out Boy, Flo Rida, Will I Am, Tim McGraw, Taylor Swift, Keith Urban, Daughtry and many more.

As well as working with multi-platinum artists, Shane has also helped shape some of the original visual styles for new bands that have also gone on to see great success, the most notable of these acts being Panic! At The Disco. Since the band’s inception, Shane’s work with them has earned several VMA nominations and won “Video Of the Year” at the 2006 MTV VMA’s for the video “I Write Sins Not Tragedies”.

His style wavers more towards indie/rock/pop combinations which are genres where his most iconic music videos can be found. Here are some more examples:

 

Director Case Study: Director X

Director X is a Canadian director who has been working in the music video industry for over 15 years. His career as a director began with him directing the music video 'Richter Scale' by EPMD. He has worked with some huge names in the music industry including:

• Drake
• R. Kelly
• The Wanted
• Justin Bieber
• Nicki Minaj
• Sean Kingston
• David Guetta
• Ludacris
• Rihanna
• Usher
• Jay-Z
• Alicia Keys
• Little Mix

He generally directs music videos within the genre POP/R&B therefore the music videos he creates match the conventions of such perfectly as he is so experienced in what these are. They often carry some sort of message or narrative which stick quite closely to the lyrical representations. Furthermore, they all include the actual artist, who is usually the main feature/focus of the video. 

Here are some examples of his work: 

Director Case Study: Emil Nava

Emil Nava is a British director who works with lots of well known artists including:

• Jessie J
• Rita Ora
• Paloma Faith 
• Ed Sheeran
• Katy B
• Calvin Harris & Ellie Goulding

He is in the UK urban pop industry for music video directing. Since making it into the industry, he has also come to direct adverts too, such as the L'Oreal adverts with Cheryl Cole promoting for the company, and the vitamin water advert featuring Jessie J. He has had a great success with Jessie J; her video for Price Tag received over 180 million views on YouTube and was the #1 viewed video in the UK. Emil Nava also won best video for Jessie J 'Do It Like A Dude' at the 2011 Q Awards. When asked why he loves making music videos as opposed to feature films currently, he said: 

"I think it’s just having such an open playing field to work with. When Ed Sheeran comes along with a song simply about love, it’s such a wide canvas try and make your video. So you really get to express really strong narrative on some, conceptual ideas on others or simply just a really strong, cinematic look. You get to express many different areas of your creativity and get to show it off a lot"  

His music videos are mostly narrative based and they have an edgy, fast cutting style which grabs audience attention. Although he enerally sticks to the genre of pop, this can be at any end of the scale; from Ellie Goulding's raw, edgy sound to Tinchy Stryder's street rap style, so he has to adapt the conventions of these sub-enres. 

In my opinion, they are all quite predictable videos in that they are what you expect to see when you hear the song, which obviously shows he is meeting the genre conventions successfully. 

Here are some examples of videos he has directed: