Auteur Theory: Jonus Akerlund
Famous Swedish Film and Music video Director Jonus Akerland was born 10th October 1965. He is well known for his use of stylish music videos that are sometimes used as mock forms of movie trailers and short films.
He directed the video ‘Ray of Light’ by singing sensation Madonna; this won a Grammy for best music video, Short Form, and a record of 7 awards at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards (Video of the Year.)
Grammy Award
MTV Logo
His first found fame was when he directed for Swedish pop act Roxette.
After that he directed videos for Lady Gaga, Metallica, Christina Aguilera, U2, Blink-182, Pink, Rammstein and Britney Spears.
One of his videos for The Prodigy’s ‘Smack My Bitch Up”, gained huge controversy due to its depiction of drug use, violence and nudity.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLT3w7hdWP0&skipcontrinter=1)
Link To The Prodigy - Smack My Bitch Up as it is an over 18's video and could not be hyperlinked.
Link To The Prodigy - Smack My Bitch Up as it is an over 18's video and could not be hyperlinked.
One of his extraordinary landmark videos is ‘Telephone’ by Lady Gaga featuring Beyonce. I found his directing techniques extremely useful when it comes to my role in my own music video production. His use of setting, lighting, costume, pretty much all of his mise – en scene is very capturing throughout the video.
The Nudity-
As the video progresses Gaga becomes more revealing, he is not shy to express the human body through the use of nudity.
As the video progresses Gaga becomes more revealing, he is not shy to express the human body through the use of nudity.
The Costumes –
The use of costume is uniquely chosen and it depicts a variety of outstanding representations.
The Criminal
The Wonder Women
The Crime Scene
The Protagonist –
Lady Gaga herself and her dominating personality are brought out in this video in the strangest stylistic ways.
The setting -
The Location is mainly set on a prison campus and at a deserted cafe road side to a highway.
Jonus did an interview for GQ magazine click the link to check it out, However I would like to note that during the interview they asked the question...
Your videos have always caused controversy, but do you find it is getting harder to shock people?
To shock people is never part of the plan. It's always the plan to touch people and to get a reaction. Every time people are touched by the work we do, I'm always a little shocked that it worked. And happy. I still think especially in America, people are sensitive to a lot of details that we wouldn't even think of. I always thought that in Europe we're a little bit more open-minded and we have a different level of shock in general. The good news is that the format of music videos is very loose right now. You can do a ten minute video or you can split it into 20 teaser spots as we did with [Madonna's] "Celebration". You can do different formats. There's no network rules to mess with your work.I was bored of music videos for a few years [because] you would spent all this hard work on it and nobody saw them! They didn't work! They didn't sell albums! The fun part was in the Nineties, was the brief was always "Break all the rules. Do something that's never been seen before!" It's a little bit more interesting and fun right now - that's probably why music videos are fun.
Youtube Interview Part 1 -
He speaks about his work process, how he got contacts for new jobs, what he does when he socialises and how he is different fromt he typical hollywood directors.
here we get a sneak peak at a few videos jonas has directed and how his use of technique is different from others.
(Click To Watch Video)
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