E-Mail This Article to a Friend Video games The brave new world of the video auteur BY MATT ASHARE
	MORE » Related links • The Directors Label Series Box Set 1 • The Directors Label Vol. 1: The Work of Director Spike Jonze • The Directors Label Vol. 2: The Work of Director Chris Cunningham • The Directors Label Vol. 3: The Work of Director Michel Gondry • The Directors Label Vol. 6: The Work of Director Anton Corbijn • The Directors Label Vol. 5: The Work of Director Jonathan Glazer • The Directors Label Vol. 7: The Work of Director Stephane Sednaoui • Mark Romanek • Anton Corbijn »Video • Chris Cunningham Trailer (windows)

Videos — music videos — have come a long way since they became an integral part of the MTV promo game in the ’80s, and the object of some heavy scorn by underground artists who all too often were left out in the cold by the video game. "Seen your video . . . we don’t wanna know," screamed Paul Westerberg in the Let It Be classic that summed up the contempt many felt for videos and their impact on pop music. Hairsprayed pretty boys, from Duran Duran and A Flock of Seagulls to absolute jokes like Kajagoogoo and A-Ha, were the proof, as heavy MTV rotation fueled record sales, eclipsing an entire segment of the underground. And yet . . . we watched. When Mark Knopfler, with a little help from Sting, scored an MTV hit by satirizing the whole process in "Money for Nothing," the irony wasn’t lost on anybody who cared. Videos were commercials. Period. Video directors, therefore, were just shooting ads. The notion that music video — along with video in general — would mature into a respected art form was far-fetched, even if bands like R.E.M. were already beginning to push the boundaries and MTV at last began to offer a platform for proto-alternative rock with its Sunday-night show 120 Minutes.

So if you’re wondering where the great auteurs of tomorrow are cutting their teeth, you could do worse than start watching music videos. That’s the underlying premise of the Directors Label, a DVD imprint of Palm Pictures that last year began compiling in deluxe form the work of individual video directors. Volume one features the work of Spike Jonze, a ’90s heavyweight (he went on to direct the feature film Adaptation) whose style was immediately recognizable once you’d seen his work with Beastie Boys ("Sabotage") and Weezer ("Buddy Holly"). The Jonze DVD was joined by collections of Chris Cunningham (Madonna’s "Frozen," Björk’s "All Is Full of Love") and Michael Gondry (Foo Fighters’ "Everlong," Björk’s "Hyperballad," Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), and the three discs have been boxed for this holiday season. And Volumes 4 through 7 — Mark Romanek, Jonathan Glazer, Anton Corbijn, and Stéphane Sednaoui — are now on the market.

You don’t have to be a film scholar to pick up on the directors’ different styles. Romanek likes playing with lighting and color. He often shoots in black and white — Jay-Z’s "99 Problems," Keith Richard’s "Wicked As It Seems," R.E.M.’s "Strange Currencies," Michael & Janet Jackson’s "Scream" — in order to intensify the effect of unusual lighting techniques. The odd lighting in Audioslave’s "Cochise" (provided only by the fireworks going off all around the band), Nine Inch Nails’ horror show "Closer" (a "director’s cut," with none of the dirty parts removed), and, most notoriously, Weezer’s "El Scorcho" (included here as a director’s cut because Rivers Cuomo hated the original and recut it) is the focus, taking the place of linear narrative. Same with color: bright splashes of primary colors replace anything resembling a story in the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ "Can’t Stop" and No Doubt’s "Hella Good."

Unfortunately, with the exception of the Cuomo/Romanek "El Scorcho" dispute (Rivers actually apologizes for being a jerk), listening to Romanek or any of the other directors discuss technique is deadly. The artists aren’t much better: there’s only so many times you can hear Bono or Michael Stipe refer to director X as a genius before nausea sets in. Amusing and/or interesting anecdotes (like the Weezer story) surface from time to time, but unless you’re a film student, skip the commentaries and take the collections for what they are: the video equivalents of top-notch mixtapes.

Much of what these directors, from Jonze to Romanek, have achieved in the past 15 years has to do with crucial changes in the technology and the music business itself. For starters, MTV relies less and less on videos. So though they’re still advertisements of a sort (Glazer’s set includes 11 TV commercials for clients like Wrangler and Guinness), there’s been a sea change in the way music videos are seen and distributed. Going digital has made it easy to include video content on enhanced CDs. DualDiscs have taken it a step further. And it seems everyone has a DVD of some sort on the market. R. Kelly’s hilarious new Trapped in the Closet Chapters 1-12 collection on Jive is my current favorite. It’s really a short-form film that includes commentary in which Kelly explains the unfolding drama — the very same drama that he goes over in great detail in the song itself.

The Internet has also provided an alternative outlet for videos through artist Web sites and the like. And it won't be that long before downloading long-form videos - feature films even - will be as easy as MP3. As a result, artists and directors have a lot more freedom to explore and experiment than back in the bad old ’80s, when major-label videos had one true purpose: MTV heavy rotation. That digital editing hardware and software have also made video shoots cheaper has only added to the proliferation of more artistically inclined video.

Indeed, it’s a given that music videos offer directors like Romanek, Jonze, and Corbijn more artistic freedom than feature films. And equally that the A-list producers tend to prefer working with the hipper artists, and vice versa. With the exception of the Corbijn set, which includes classic, ahead-of-their-time cuts from the ’80s by Echo and the Bunnymen, Depeche Mode, and Joy Division, the track listings for the four new Directors Series DVDs read like a who’s who of critics’ darlings. Beck, Radiohead, U2, R.E.M., and Björk get the most play. It makes perfect sense: artistically inclined musicians are naturally attracted to the maverick video directors — the new auteurs.