In this essay I will be analysing the style of Romain Gavras and his music video style, the inter-textual references and the similarities in his videos, the videos I have chosen are Simian Mobile Disco- I Believe, Justice- Stress, M.I.A. -Born Free and Justice- Civilisation.
Romain Gavras is most famous for his controversial videos, the most well known of these is M.I.A.’s single ‘Born Free’, a largely instrumental track with minimal lyrics and quite a hardcore, gritty tune. Inside the video the audience is exposed to many violent scenes and severe segregation against the ginger race. The shock factor is something Gavras uses to make a lasting effect on the audience, the music he uses is usually from the same genre, moving from Simian Mobile Disco to Justice and making a lasting impression on the music video industry with the ‘Born Free’ video which was so controversial and close to the edge of what is accepted socially that it was banned from YouTube.
Romain Gavras is the son of Constantinos Gavras, a highly political film maker who has very strong views, he is known as Costa-Gavras. The fact that his father is an influential film maker who also pushes the boundaries of modern film making and plays the regulations close to the edge. Despite this, Romain denies his father’s influence on his video making.
‘I Believe’ by Simian Mobile Disco was Romain Gavras’ first mainstream video, Gavras was taken upon to make the video and he decided to flip the idea into a movement for the music industry, taking some conventions of an electronic video that features a repetitive chorus, it shows a lot of people singing along in different set ups. In the ‘I Believe’ video, this simple convention is twisted, Gavras uses ‘gypsies’ in the place of normal people. The characters look very trivial as they are singing in an everyday situation; it is quite uncomfortable for a viewer to watch because of this. The video is very simplistic yet infinitely powerful, this is something that Gavras plays with throughout his catalogue and can be seen as a convention in his videos, a simple idea made powerful with clever editing and different shots and a consistent pace. The editing in the video is very precise to the music, there is a long intro to the video where the characters are shown before they sing along, the most powerful part of the video, for me is the fact that all the characters are completely emotionless and flat, there is no reaction to the person singing, this is a pivotal feature of the strangeness of the video.
‘Stress’ by Justice, is Romain Gavras’ second video and second most controversial video. It is so gritty and high in verisimilitude that people believed that it was a real documentary; the video includes a gang of youths travelling around a French city creating havoc and leaving a trail of destruction. Gavras made this video with controversy in mind, this video propelled Justice into the world, this was one of Justice’s first tracks to be released from the album, it is all instrumental and quite unpleasant to listen to in a way, this was transferred into the music video by Gavras, it is very much a similar type of music to Simian Mobile Disco, Justice and Simian Mobile Disco have used each other to make it into the charts, Justice became known by winning a competition to remix Simian’s song ‘We Are Your Friends’ earning both bands a lot of respect not just in the electronic music industry but in the popular music chart. There is inter-textual reference in the ‘Stress’ video, this could be seen as Gavras mocking Justice’s back catalogue, their happy sounding ‘D.A.N.C.E.’ comes on in the car stereo much to the disgust of the antagonists, who proceed to kick the stereo in order to stop this. It is a convention of Gavras to sacrifice time in the video by making a break in the music, this is to support the narrative of the video, this is seen majorly in M.I.A.’s video.
‘Born Free’ by M.I.A is one of the most controversial music videos of all time, this made it very well talked about, the use of word of mouth is now very important in the music video industry, having a popular music video is extremely desirable as this leads to more views and more money. In the born free video, ginger people are taken away from their homes as part of a segregation movement, it is very similar to scenes from district six in South Africa and the monumental hatred between Northern and Southern Ireland, especially when the bus is sabotaged. Gavras likes to use very realistic special effects (and to keep these to a minimum) and as part of the video, the victims are made to run through a minefield, the final shot being one poor ginger person being blown into pieces, which was probably one of the main factors that got it banned from YouTube, this and the reference to past problems in the world such as the Berlin wall.
With regards to Goodwin’s six point analysis, Gavras destroys many of his conventions, this could be because of the genre of music that Romain chooses. This is electronic music and predominantly DJ’s, this compliments Romain’s anarchistic attitude that could be inherited from his father.
Gavras’ latest project was that of Justice’s debut single for their new album “audio, video, disco”, the track was exposed gradually, Gavras was responsible for ‘Civilisation’ which broke some conventions of Justice and many conventions of Gavras’ the video was in fact part of an Adidas campaign, which leads a follower to the assumption that Gavras may have ‘sold out’ and given in to the pressures of Hollywood (much like other successful music video directors such as Spike Jonze) the video includes Katy Perry, David Beckham, LMFAO and Messi, this may seem a bit strange to think about but Gavras puts his own stamp on it, not the usual stamp, however. He uses fat editing and appropriate shot switches to give the video life.
Gavras is a fan of a dynamic camera, he rarely uses conventional filming techniques, (handheld in ‘Stress’, constantly zooming and moving in ‘Born Free’ and ‘I believe’). Gavras uses editing cleverly, as he wants to have a high verisimilitude in all of his video’s (apart from ‘Civilisation’) he uses minimalistic editing which is quite hard to notice. These conventions make it easy for a fan to recognise a video as one of Gavras’, this means he has succeeded in the art of becoming an auteur.
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