Roman White

Roman White- Music video director

By Sarah Walley

Introduction

Roman White has directed many music videos over the last 10 years. He has worked with artists like Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber. In the music industry he is quite the household name, having directed over 96 videos. He has a few motifs which are recognisable within his work, even with different artists. He has won many awards for his work including a CMT Music award, MTV Video Music Award, an Academy of Country Music Award, and numerous Emmys.

Common shots

I have been watching different music videos that have directed by Roman White and I have discovered that he uses a lot of wide angle shots. This makes the audience feel the escape mentioned in the theory of Uses and Gratification and the Utopian theory. I hope to be able to replicate this as it really makes the video look good, and make the audience get lost in the video as they are dreaming of the space.Another key shot that he uses is close up shots. This maybe because of the demands of the record label, mentioned in Goodwin’s theory, but really conveys the emotion of the song, especially in the song ‘Mine’ by Taylor Swift. I will be including lots of facial shots in my video as it important when conveying the emotion and make the video look more professional.

Effects

When watching some of his videos Roman tends to use an out of focus shot, and then focuses the camera. This gives the effect that the artist has a clear vision of their identity and what they are doing. This is an important factor and features in the Social Identity theory. Also Roman creates a narrative storyline and most of lyrics match the lyrics. This creates a relationship between the lyrics and the visual, part of Goodwin’s Theory. I, however, do not think that this would match the songs that I have narrowed the choice down to. I will still want to have a narrative storyline but don’t think this kind of relationship would be as effective.

Genres

Roman has directed many genres of music, like pop, country etc. however, I have noticed with looking at his work, that he like the audience to know genre they are watching. So he put subtle hints into the music video. With Taylor Swifts ‘Mine’ video, he uses greenery and space to show the fact that we are watching country music.