My Band

Richard AyoadeMusic Video Director

Richard Ayoade has directed music videos for…

Examples of his work;

Richard Ayoade’s visual style, genre, editing style and stylistic

influences • Richard Ayoade works with mainstream indie

rock bands, such as Arctic Monkeys.• The artists tend to narrate the story behind the

video and star as themselves in the live performances.

Richard Ayoade tends to use a lot of live performance in his videos and uses lighting to

emphasise the artists. In this and the lyrics/song title are visualised because they are literally

standing next to each other.

‘Last Shadow Puppets – Standing Next To Me’

• His videos appear on music channels such as

• He won best video at the NME awards in February 2009 for Last Shadow Puppets’ My Mistakes Were Made For You.

• He has produced videos with spectacular special effects (arctic monkeys - crying lightning) and very simple videos (vampire weekend – oxford comma)

Analysis of ‘The Last Shadow Puppets – Standing Next To

Me’This video is based upon a very simplistic idea, but is very effective. The miseen-scene is so basic containing the two artists with their instruments, lighting,and 7 girls dancing, that is all. As the video begins the camera shot contains

both artists, which literally illustrate the song title ‘standing next to me’ as theyare standing next to each other. At the beginning of the video the camera fade away from

the artists and the bands name appear like credits at the end of a movie. The lightingtechniques throughout the video create shadows over the artists which also illustrate

literally the bands name ‘the last shadow puppets’. The lighting and cameraworkthroughout the video focus on the artists faces, at the beginning of the video there arespotlights on them, the camera then zooms away and big bright light bulbs appear in a

row, the camera then circles the artists constantly, creating a more dynamic feel to stagethe performance. which is very common in music video to give the audience a sense of

intimacy, later on the artists are both standing on platforms whilst two flashing spotlightsare used to create shadows of their silhouettes on the wall behind them. What is

interesting in this video is that Richard Ayoade hasn’t used the common technique ofcutting from a narrative of the lyrics to a live performance, but actually uses live

performance from the artists throughout the whole video from start to finish.

Analysis of Arctic Monkeys – Crying Lightning

This video is based entirely upon the band’s live performance on the song throughout the video. But is not a typical location, the band are located on a boat in the middle of the ocean, the band appear huge in context to the boat. It is clear the band

have just performed the track on a green screen and the special effects of the ocean and weather have been added post-

production, I’m not sure whether the idea is for it to look a little bit fake, I think the band want to be a ‘rock’ band and have used big holograms of them playing their guitars to do this. The song title is literally illustrated through the used of

the lightning effects and stormy weather throughout. The song title is also displayed at the beginning as the camera ‘flies’

over the water surface. The camerawork focuses on the instruments, for example on the drums solo there is a shot of the drums. What I find interesting is that the camera isn’t just

the circling the artists but is actually shooting them from a birds eye view too which is very unique and different for a music video. In my opinion although this video is quite a

simple technique; the band performance green screened with special effects it does have the ‘repeatability’ factor and makes

you want to watch it over and over again.

Comparison between Arctic Monkeys and Last Shadow

PuppetsThere are a few of similarities between these two music videos which Richard Ayoade has directed. This could be because Alex Turner is in

both bands; his main band being Arctic Monkeys and Last Shadow Puppets is his side project with Miles Kane. At the beginning of both

videos there are ‘movie-like’ credits which display the title of the song and the bands name. Both videos are very focused on the band, with the band’s live performance being the main event throughout rather than an accompanying narrative story, in both videos the camera is

constantly focused on the artists, circling them, focusing on the instruments being played. The videos are very different though in the

sense that Last Shadow Puppets uses clever lighting techniques to make the viewer want to watch it again, whereas Arctic Monkeys use

spectacular blockbuster film style special effects to create that repeatability factor.