Music Video Director- Samuel Bayer

A music video director who I'd like to take inspiration from is Samuel Bayer. He has worked in genres such as indie rock and pop with bands such as Maroon 5 and Green Day. A lot of his work has a high budget with the use of special effects and a wide range of locations that create a detailed and clear narrative. He also incorporates performance elements with either live performance or lip sinking as well as creative a narrative for the video. For his indie videos he uses much more performance as this is an important genre characteristic for indie rock. His use of colour is also a genre characteristic. He mainly uses dark colours and tones as well as mainly black costumes. These dark colours relate to the feelings given off by indie songs therefore using them as a genre convention.

In this Green Day video for "American Idiot" special effects are used to speed up the actions of one of the band members as well as slow him down compared to the beat of the music and the other band members. Another example of special effects in this video is when green liquid floods into the set from the back and soaks the band.  The mise-en-scene of the video is all bleak and dark, their costumes are all black with red accessories such as ties. The background colours are dull greens are greys which suggest a dark sombre tone.This effect is a favourite of Bayer's as he also uses it in the Maroon 5 video for "Animals". this example shows a red liquid falling on Adam Levine and the girl he is stalking in the video. The red liquid representing blood.

Bayer is very good at creating a dark atmosphere in most of his videos. Not just his indie videos where a key genre convention, but also in his pop videos for Maroon 5. "Animals" is about a stalker and "Payphone" is about a heist and contains a lot of violence and explosions. The mise-en-scene is also very dark as the costumes are mainly black or grey as well as the background which is often bleak or dark. "Animals" also contains heavy rainfall which gives the video an extra addition of negativity and a sombre tone. He is so good at creating a sombre mood effectively that he was given the job of directing the remake of "The Nightmare On Elm Street". This is his only credit as a film director.

Here are more examples of his music videography