1. Auteur Theory By Stacey Hall The term auteur originates from France which translates as author, which means that a director’s film reflects their creative vision. The Auteur theory was introduced in the 1950’s by French film directors like Francois Truffaut who advocated a focus on the contribution directors made on the style and form of film, he quoted... “A true film auteur is someone who brings something genuinely personal to his subject instead of producing a tasteful, accurate but lifeless rendering of the original material” An auteur is a film maker whose style and practise is distinctive which creates a signature auteur status for them. It is also a film maker who has a personal, signature style and keeps creative control over his or her work. Making any film or in this case a music video the director is the auteur but it would not be possible for them to create the whole production on their own, instead they collaborate with others and team up with; writer, cinematographer and actors but the director is still an auteur in a sense as they control everyone and everything in the production.

2. Genre and Auteur Theory The auteur theory is different to the genre theory as auteur draws our attention towards what is different between film, rather than what is similar. The table below is from page 7 of the hand out given to me. Many media texts are meant to be consider as a product of individuals creativity and many are simply ‘products’ for instants, Tim Burtons Nightmare before Christmas is an auteur as you recognise his individual style of gothic tones where as Heat magazine writer is not an auteur as it is a generic product.

3. Chris Cunningham Chris Cunningham is a British music video film director and video artist. Chris has worked on many projects and has produced; music video’s, video art, short films, commercials, music production, photography, and a novel. Cunningham is known for his warped style and disturbing imagery, he has worked and produced music videos for the likes of; Aphex Twins, Bjork, Placebo and Madonna. He Won multiple awards, including break through video at the MTV awards for his video ‘All in love.’ As well as producing music video he has also produced commercials for; Gucci, Play station and orange.

5. It reflects the horror genre by using gothic imagery such as; black crows.

6. Lots of canted camera angles are used and nearly all the camera work seem to be

7. hand held to create more dramatic, dizzying movement to illustrate the aggression in the video’s maybe?

9. - Canted camera angles are used which I have print screed an example of above, the shot is rotated to it’s side, this creates confusion for the audience but it also looks; creative and arty as Cunningham has used editing software to create a TV image with bad signal which mesmerises the audience. As well as canted camera angles Cunningham uses nearly all hand held camera work as this creates the illusion of; chaos, thrill and excitement. -This particular video by Cunningham is incredibly entropic as it contains main unsuspecting imagery in a music video. What makes this video so entropic is it contains main shocking Elements which include; an old lady, evil spirit on the TV who then with special effects make up comes out of the TV and transforms in a gaunt creature and finally children are represented as demon which is scary but instead of just being scary child Cunningham has morphed everyone to look like the Aphex Twins.

10. Madonna- Frozen by Chris Cunningham http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS088Opj9o0&ob=av2e As I am investigating auteur’s I have decided to look at ‘Frozen’ music video to see if there are any similarities to Come to daddy which suggests that Chris Cunningham is an auteur of music videos as he will have signature things which makes him recognisable. - The most distinctive auteur signature of Cunningham is the horror genre inspiration. Horror is obvious a big influence on him as both Frozen and Come to daddy have horror tones to them. This video particularly represents this by using; Madonna becoming ravens, dark imagery is shown, the lighting is very dark but also calming in a sense. Finally the way Madonna is dressed is rather gothic as you can see she is wearing black floating garments.

13. OzzyOsbourne

14. Iron Maiden

15. Sheryl Crow

17. Aero Smith

18. Blink 182

20. Smells like teen spirit- Nirvana http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTWKbfoikeg&ob=av3e When talking about auteur it means if that the director has signature techniques used in his work. To investigate if Samuel Bayers is an auteur I have decided to look and analyse two of his music video’s; Smells like teen spirit and Disposable teens. Smells like teen spirit was his first ever music video he directed, it will be interesting if this music video has a similar style to his more contemporary videos. - The editing of this video is illustrative to the music as the cuts are in sync with the beat of the music. The beginning of the song is very slow paced and drab so the editing reflects this, long takes are used to emphasise the depressing tone to the music. When the chorus kicks in the editing becomes increased, more shots are used which creates a; fun, energetic vibe which is illustrated by the extras moshing. No shot is stationery through out this video each are either; panning tracking or zooming in or out. Slight canted camera angles are used when the music becomes more aggressive this creates abstract shots which are dissertating.

23. Disposable teens-Marilyn Mason http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKkiCFOE-Ic&ob=av3e As I am investigating auteur’s I have decided to look at ‘Disposable teens’music video to see if there are any similarities to Smells like teen spirit which suggests that Samuel Bayer is an auteur of music videos as he will have signature things which makes him recognisable. - The first similarity to Smells like teen spirit is the pace of editing, I mentioned that I found that Bayers tended to pace the edits to the beat of the music this is true for both music videos I have watched. Disposable is a mental rock song which tends to have several beats merged in the dong but Bayers focuses on singular beats e.g. A drum note. The edits in Disposable are not as fast a Smells like teen spirit but I would argue that there are more shots in this video as there is more characters being portrayed e.g. The Pope, A human piranha ect...