Mark Romanek

Mark Romanek

Mark Romanek work on films, music videos and commercials. He is an American man who has reached a worldwide audience.  He is best known for his music videos in which he has gained many musical awards. He has built his career up and worked with many famous names such as Michael Jackson and Jay-Z. I am going to be looking into his different music videos and analysing them using Goodwin’s six point analyses.

In the music video of Scream by Janet and Michael Jackson, Mark Romanek has created a Black and White Sci-fi themed music video which is very much focused on the main artists. This refers to the forth point in Andrew Goodwin’s six point analysis. Which is that the demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close up’s of the artist and the artists may develop motifs which recur across their work (a visual style). Throughout the music video there is lots of close ups of the main artists and to draw more attention to them in the background there is mostly white and the artists are dressed in Black costumes putting all the focus on them. The music video also is a pop video and therefore when the artists are dancing then they is showing a genre characteristic which can also refer back to Andrew Goodwin’s six point analysis in which the music video demonstrates typical genre characteristic. Andrew Goodwin’s second point of his analysis is that there is a relationship between lyrics and visuals this is also demonstrated in the music video of Scream as the song is about getting away from the media and they are in a spaceship and getting away from earth. This music video won an MTV Music Video and a Grammy. The music video supposedly was listed in the Guinness world records book as the most expensive video ever made even though Mark Romanek denied these claims and said that there were other videos more expensive.

Another music video that Mark Romanek has directed is Speed of Sound by Coldplay. The music video starts with a fade in close up of the main singer with a black background so there is complete focus on the singers face. This goes on for the first 30 seconds of the music video moving from a close up shot to a medium shot. This refers again to Goodwin’s analysis in which he states that there are demands from the record label about how often the artist is shown in the music video. The Auteur theory is when the voice can shine through any creative vision by the music video director. This is relevant in the opening 30 seconds because the main focus is on the singer’s voice and the director has put a plain background and lit up the singer so the audience is just listening to the artist sing. As the music video progresses more of the setting is shown and we are able to establish more of the music video itself. Andrew Goodwin’s second point is that there is a relationship between lyrics and visuals and this is shown when the words “planets are moving at the speed of light” are sung and there are many lights moving in the background surrounding the band. This music video is very obviously performance as we see the band is playing the music. There is very low key lighting and Mark Romanek purposely done this to create silhouettes. As the song progresses the editing gets quicker. Mark Romanek has clearly tried to keep the music video simple so that the main focus is on the talent that the band has (Auteur theory).

One of the most recent videos that Mark Romanek has directed is Jay-Z 99 problems. This is another black and white music video like scream however, the artist does feature in the video but the music video follows a narrative. The editing throughout the music video is very fast and sticks to the bass beat of the music video. There is a strong relationship between the lyrics and the visuals which relates back to Andrew Goodwin’s analysis. There is also a negative representation of women made and they are referred to as a female dog. Edits of slow motion and fast motion is also used to contrast with each other. The inspiration behind the video came from the artist them self and Jay-Z used a real life experience that he had had and told Mark about it and Mark brought it to this music video. The music video features lots of genre characteristics of a typical R&B music video such as money, drugs and girls.

One of the older music videos that Mark Romanek has directed is Hurt by Jonny Cash. The music video is part colour and part black and white. There is less a relationship between lyrics and visuals as there are random clips put together. This contrasts with the previous music videos that he has directed. However Goodwin’s point about the artist requiring lots of shots featuring them does occur in this music video as they constantly cut back to the artist sitting playing a guitar. The artist is lit up and there is a plain dark background and looks very much like the beginning of Coldplay’s Speed of Sound video. This video relates to the sixth point in Goodwin’s analysis about intertextual references as the short clips that are shown are of things that the audience can relate to. It becomes clear that he is looking back on the past. Looking at Mark Romanek’s music videos he seems to be able to allow the artist to have influences on the music video them self.

Madonna’s rain is another music video that Mark Romanek had directed and we as an audience immediately get a supernatural feel to the music video and relate it to Michael Jackson’s Scream video. Again like many other videos that I have previously mentioned there is lots of close up shots of the artist them self and this point made in Goodwin’s analysis seems to occur lots in music video. There seems to always be a dark background and the artist is always lit well in the music video. This is also a strong feature in Hurt by Jonny Cash and Speed of Sound by Coldplay.

There seems to be links between the way in which Mark Romanek produces his music videos and there are certain features that occur in his music videos.