The Auteur Theory - Chris Cunningham's Videos

Chris Cunningham





1.  This video was very abstract and did not use genre characteristics, the song itself is a ragga jungle song, but it feels as if it has a view to being more mainstream that most songs in this genre, you can see this in the fact that a music video has been made for it as most songs in this genre would not. The way that the record company has decided to bring someone with such a distinct style as Chris Cunningham, reveals further the mainstream ambitions of this song, and by the MTV logo in the top corner we can tell it was played on TV music channels.

2. In the genre of music there will normally be no lyrics or a very small amount, in the form of samples rather than specific vocals recorded for the song, this means that the director when making the music video had no inspiration from the lyrics however it also means he had no limitations due to the lyrical content either, this suits the style of video that Chris Cunningham creates as he is more free to create a visually challenging and creative product which can seamlessly blend with the music whilst standing on its own merit as a video. 

3. The music is fast paced with a slow beat and repetitive drum loops, though the video dosent relate to the song due to its visuals, the director needs someway to tie in the video to the song itself to create some sort of singular product,  so he has created a relationship between the beat, the transitions/cuts and movement of the characters and camera in the video itself to bring singularity to the product overall.

4. There were many close ups of the artist in the video although his face was somewhat warped, meting demands of the record company.

5. There was alot of reference to the notion of looking, having the television used as a main prop within the video, providing an image of the singer

6.  There was limited intertextual reference to any other media due to the abstractness of the video.