The Auteur Theory

François Truffaut claimed in his essay "A Certain Tendency in French Cinema" that a film is a great way to express a director's personal ideas. He believed that this meant an director should in fact be named an auteur.

An auteur simply means that the film-maker influences their movies so much, that they rank as their author.

"There are no good or bad movies, only good and bad directors." - François Truffaut

A man famous for being a film auteur is Tim Burton, who is famous for creating dark and quirky-themed films such as Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride.

Almost like a genre in itself, Tim Burton contains a lot of themes in his films, that are dark, mysterious and slightly creepy. However, a twist has been added to the films; despite it being dark and mysterious, there are elements of isolation and quirkiness. For example, in the film "Edward Scissorhands", the character of Edward at first glance would be something that would initially be feared, but as the story goes on, we learn that the character is harmless and completely misunderstood.

Steering more towards the direction of music videos and whilst keeping the auteur theory in mind, I am going to look at some music video directors who are famous for their unique styles they have created in the past.

Spike Jonze

Spike Jonze is a well-known director, producer and actor whose work includes a range of mediums such as producing and directing advertisements, short and feature films, television shows and music videos.

One of their music videos for American band "Weezer" was created in the style of 70's television program "Happy Days." The music video could easily be mistaken for a 70's video/performance, despite the video actually being shot in the 90's. The quirkiness of the music video enabled the music video to win MTV Video Music Awards 1995 for Breakthrough Video and Best Alternative Video.

In the music video for "The Suburbs" by Arcade Fire, the scenes are taken from Spike Jonze's short film "Scenes From The Suburbs" which involves scenes of young teenagers getting up to trouble in the suburbs. The video involves no lip syncing whatsoever, and literally just has a back story of the lives of the miscreants in the suburbs. I think this is an interesting concept, as it tells a story in a whole other way, and makes the band the narrator of the story (which is usually the case with music in itself).