Jonathan Glazer

Jonathan Glazer (born 1966 in London) is an English director of films, commercials and music videos.

After studying theatre deisgn, at Nottingham Trent University, Glazer started out directing theatre and making film and television trailers, including award-winning work for the BBC . In 1993 he wrote and directed three short films of his own ("Mad", "Pool" and "Commission"), and joined Academy Commercials. He has directed popular campaigns for Guinnes (Swimblack and Surfer) and Stella Artois (Devils Island). Since the mid-1990s he has directed a number of music videos, and was named MTV Director of the Year 1997. His work in these areas is often noted for its originality.

Click here for a list of his music videos, films and commercials. I watched all of the music videos listed on this website and the key theme I found amongst the majority of them was the use of narrative to convey a character. For example, 'Live With Me' by Massive Attack (2006) follows a young woman as she heads home and drinks excessive amounts of alcohol. The video is very enigmatic in a number of ways. For example, the audience becomes curious as to why she is drinking so much and who is calling her mobile phone. The sequence in which she falls down the stairs is interesting as it too is enigmatic, audiences begin to question what this signifies; is it just her head spinning as she's consumed too much alcohol or is it resembling the fact that her life feels as if it going downhill and falling apart? This is quite a dark use of narrative, creating a depressing mood. However, normality is regained as she looks up at the stars at the end of video, connoting that brighter things are ahead. I particularly like this video as audiences engage with the video in a much more lean forward manner. So much enigma is created that you really have to think about what is actually meant behind it all. Furthermore, I find it interesting that Glazer has chosen to use a young woman, dressed in a suit with a respectable home, for this narrative as opposed to the stereotypical drunken teenager representation ubiquitous in the media today. I find this quite challenging to such representations and I feel that the ideological discourse created from this video is that we all put on a front, acting as if we are all happy when really we are hurting on the inside.

His use of character is also evident in 'A Song For The Lovers' by Richard Ashcroft (2000) in which the camera follows the lead around his hotel room as he relaxes. There is no real narrative to the video, it doesn't seem to climax or go anywhere in any way. Ironically, in this way, it can be argued that this video acts as a marketing tool, used to construct the star's persona as the connotations of this are that he does not conform to expectations. This rebelious representation is reinforced as he blasts his music out of his hotel room, with shots of the door being banged on, presumably for the amount of noise he is making.

One of my favourite pieces of his work was the 'Paint' advert he created for the Sony Bravia television. This followed on from Nicolai Fuglsig's previous 'bouncing balls' advert in which over 250,000 brightly-coloured computer generated balls bounced down a street in San Francisco. Glazer's 'Paint' featured a tower block in Glasgow which was covered in 70,000 litres of environmentally friendly paint with the help of over 1400 separate explosions featured as imitation fireworks. This was filmed with a crew of 250 people over a 10 day period in July 2006. I think that this is one of my favourites purely because of the scale of it. Such a spectacle is created as it is something you imagine happening but know it would never. This is what I like about Jonathan Glazer, he takes the unreal and makes it real. Another example of this is in his music video for UNKLE, 'Rabbit in your Headlights' in which the characters figure crushes the car that crashes into him, something that is physically impossible but Glazer makes real, creating a spectacle.

This blog which has a good Flickr page on it with images taken on the set of filming Glazer's 'Paint' ad for Sony.

This page has lots of his videos on it too, including his innovative advertising campaign for Motorola which consisted of two human figures spinning on what seems to be a pottery wheel, with the figures moulding and changing with the speed of the spinning action. The advert ends with "There's a phone designed to help eliminate aids in africa" and then a shot of the new Motorola followed by "Please buy it". This is extremely effect in my mind as the audiences attention is kept buy the enigma as to what the figures will mould into next, a clever technique used to advertise the product.

Having researched him, i find his work hard to describe or categorise as it is so different from anything i have seen before. He is extremely original and innovative in his work and i find it inspiring and extremely clever. He clearly thinks long and hard about his work to come up with such great ideas.