Music Video Director Profile - Marc Webb

I came across Marc Webb in a list of video directors who are now movie directors. I noticed that Webb had directed the videos of loads of big bands and artists I like, and when I read that he was also the director of one of my favourite ever films, 500 Days Of Summer, I knew I had to find out more about him.

Webb on set

After directing his debut film, 500 Days Of Summer, he was also announced to direct the new Spiderman film coming out in 2012.

Despite his new found Hollywood success, Webb began as a music video director in the late 90s. In 2001 alone he directed 18 videos, including those for Backstreet Boys, Good Charlotte and Green Day. He went on to direct loads of videos for some of my personal favourites, like Maroon 5, Snow Patrol, All American Rejects and My Chemical Romance. As well as his success in the rock world, he has also directed videos for huge mainstream artists like Miley Cyrus, Fergie, The Pussycat Dolls and Nelly.

Yellowcard's Ocean Avenue video

Webb also has a signature white lamb symbol, which appears as a motif in several of his videos including two of Yellowcard's.

Here are some of his notable videos that I think are worth talking about:


My Chemical Romance - The Ghost of You (2005)
A lot of people don't like My Chemical Romance but you can't deny that this video is moving, which is why I think it's extremely effective. It also reflects the song's sombre tone and theme about losing a loved one. The video cost over $300,000 to make and is set during World War 2, paying homage to the film Saving Private Ryan. The band themselves admitted, "we shot a movie and just edited it to be a video". The video cuts between two narratives: the classic performance and a film-like story. The performance shows the band performing in army uniform at a ballroom dance, where we see the protagonist of the video (played by the band's bassist Mikey Way) dancing with a beautiful woman. At the first note of the chorus, the video switches scenes to a gritty setting where the band and many other men are going into war. It is a pretty harrowing video, and I won't spoil the ending, but you can probably guess what happens. A daytime cut was also made, editing out some of the more gruesome scenes like soldiers vomiting and graphic wounds. During one scene, the band claim that when all the members, crew and extras rushed forward on the boat, it capsized and the band nearly drowned, proving that making a music video isn't always fun and games!





Jimmy Eat World - Work (2005)
This video was filmed at Madison West High School in Wisconsin, US, where Webb himself went to high school, showing that he likes to make videos quite close to his heart. It features interviews with students at the school who talk about life after high school and where they see themselves in the future. It also shows these students with their names and ages, filming them during a normal day at school. It fits with the song as it is apparently about doing something you shouldn't be doing, and one of the girls in the video talks about how parents worry about kids getting into trouble and making the wrong decisions, whereas she argues that these mistakes are important as we learn from them. The video again features a performance from the band, cross-cut amongst the high school concept, where they are playing underneath a tree decorated with lights and hanging photos, making it very pretty and visually exciting. The video appeals to both teenagers who like the band and their older fans, as the teenagers can relate to the normal kids in the video and understand what they mean, whereas adults may look back at their time at school and compare themselves to the people in this video and how they expected their lives to turn out. For this reason this is quite a deep video, and was probably made more to make you think than necessarily just for enjoyment.




Fergie - Clumsy (co-directed with Rich Lee) (2007)
Although not a fan of the song I admit that this video is pretty creative and fun to watch. By now a very established video director, working with another, you'll notice that the video opens with the title 'Rich and Marc present', of course referring to Marc Webb and his co-director. The concept of the video is a pop-up book where we see Fergie performing in many different outfits in different locations, including on a catwalk, in a car and a Tron-style future setting, all supposed to be pages in this exciting, interactive pop-up book. The video is very playful and colourful, fitting the style of the song and in complete contrast with the 'The Ghost of You' video. The focus is clearly on Fergie herself, making her the star of the show, and although the song is about falling in love, little attention is paid to the face of the leading man in the video: it's all about her as an artist and a brand.




All-American Rejects - Gives You Hell (2008)
Most people will recognise this video as it's quite well-known and quirky. Three versions of this video were created: the main video, with both performance and narrative, plus a full-performance version and the full-narrative version. I couldn't seem to find the normal version in good enough quality on youtube, so here is the full narrative version. It follows the story of two next-door neighbours, both played by frontman Tyson Ritter. One is a prim, proper version of himself with gelled-down hair, sweater-vests and a perfect suburban-housewife-type girlfriend. The other is a lazy, noisy rockstar who walks around wearing nothing but skinny jeans and shades, bearing his tattooed chest to his disapproving neighbour. The two fight and prank each other until their feud reaches its climax as rockstar-Tyson wakes up square-Tyson in the middle of the night playing music with his band and yelling through megaphones. The storyline fits with the lyrics as the two men are determined to "give each other hell". The video ends humorously as the two decide that the best way to settle their problems is to swap girlfriends; the blonde, perfect girlfriend would rather be with the rugged rockstar Tyson, whereas his cool, laidback girlfriend is more attracted to the nerdy Tyson. The video ends happily for everyone involved!



Webb does not have a particularly clear style as some directors do. As he has worked with so many different artists over the years, he seems to adapt well to all the different genres and song themes to create an appropriate video.

He predominantly works with rock bands, especially at the start of his career, and has made fairly dark, gloomy videos to reflect the style of music, from the grittiness of Green Day's '21 Guns' video to this highly stylised black-and-white gothic feeling video by My Chemical Romance.

However, many of Webb's videos have also been much more commercial and fun, like Miley Cyrus's colourful street-party video. This shows Webb's diversity and that although he seems to favour rock, he is not biased towards particular musical styles or genres.

Most of Webb's videos seem to have the classic format of half narrative, half performance, and I don't seem to have noticed any that are solely concept or narrative. Although this means that Webb generally sticks to music video conventions, this isn't to say that his videos are not creative and great to watch, as they definitely are. In this way Webb has inspired me for my own video as I think the best way to make a video is to have both a performance and a concept or narrative, and Webb has shown me that sticking to such conventions gives you lots of creative scope and can mean your video looks both professional and enjoyable to watch.

Reflections on the "Music & Me" lesson

This lesson was really interesting as although we are all the same age and get on really well, we all have quite different music tastes. Saying that, there was lot of agreement amongst the childhood songs, as we all agreed on how much we loved Busted, S Club 7 or Steps. We realised that this was probably because, as a child, you are less inclined to develop your own personal music taste and tend to listen to whatever is on the radio and what your friends like. I know that was the case for me, as it was only really when I got to secondary school that I started to find bands via the internet and listen to songs that weren't so mainstream. Pretty much everyone said that was true for them too, and we noticed that through the teenage years is when you start to form your own musical identity and become more pro-active in your tastes and discovering new bands.

The first festival I went to, aged 13

It was also nice to hear the variety of tracks that meant something to people, and why it was such a special song for them. For some it reminded of them of a certain time in their life, or a certain person, or a certain TV show, and for others they just felt a connection with the music or lyrics.

Busted - A childhood favourite!

The songs we chose from our childhoods tended to be aspirational. For example, me and my younger brother both used to love Busted. He, as a boy, probably looked up to them because they were having so much fun and seemed so cool, messing around and playing in a band. Other groups like S Club 7 also seemed to be so free and have clean-cut fun, especially in the tv shows that they starred in (Miami 7, LA7, etc.) so fans could follow them not just by listening to their music; they were using synergy to brand the group. Basically, they all just looked like a big group of best friends having the time of their lives, which of course appealed to us as kids.

Klaxons - My favourite band a few years back

The songs meaningful to us during our pre-teen/early teen years were often special as they marked a carefree time when we were starting to discover ourselves as music consumers. They might also have reminded us of someone we were closer to at that age, or a specific event we look back upon with fond memories.

This lesson taught me that different songs can mean very different things to different people, and our tastes change with age. This means that artists and their record companies always have their target audience in mind when being marketed; as I mentioned earlier, the bands we loved as kids appealed to us in just the right ways.

last.fm - A modern way to find new music

The most important change, for me anyway, is the internet, as pre-teenage years I would only really consume music via the radio and occasional music channels, but nowadays I would probably only know about 10% of the bands I currently listen to if it wasn't for the internet. Now I use websites like YouTube, Twitter and last.fm to find bands similar to other bands I already listen to and of similar genres. The fact that many of the bands are friends and often tour together also leads to recognition by fans, as we assume they must be similar to the bands they are touring with. If I hear of a band I like the sound of, I would normally stream their albums using Spotify, something which of course didn't exist a few years ago, so the internet has definitely shaped my music consumption significantly.

Music & Me

Childhood



Busted - You Said No (2003)

Busted were my ultimate favourite band when they first came out, I had both their albums and knew the words to ALL their songs. They were also really funny and had great videos. You Said No is one of my favourites and I remember watching it all the time on the music channels. I was also gutted when I heard that Charlie was leaving the band, causing them to split up. I'm still waiting for a reunion tour... me and my friends would be the first ones there at the front!


Early teens



Fall Out Boy - Sugar, We're Going Down (2005)

Fall Out Boy were one of the first bands I started listening to when I started to get more into that kind of music around year 8 time, rather than just listening to whatever was on the radio at the time as everyone pretty much did in Primary School. I heard one of their newer songs at the time and started listening to their back catalogue, and this is my favourite song by them and the video is quite funny too. Now they've gone on an unspecified 'hiatus' so this song is a bit nostalgic too as they aren't making any music anymore so to listen to them I have to return to their old songs, and listening to this song just reminds me of when I was 13 or 14 and discovering bands I'd never listened to before, like FOB.




Now

	Boys Like Girls - The Great Escape .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Boys Like Girls - The Great Escape (2007)

There are two versions of this song, when they released it as a single they re-recorded it and I really don't like the new version, I don't know why but the backing track is different and it's just not the same! So I chose the original version which is on the album, which is where I heard it. I used to really like Boys Like Girls, I don't listen to them as much anymore but this is still one of my favourite songs as it's just so uplifting and carefree. It's written about graduating from high school so it makes me think of how much freedom we'll all have when we leave school, and how it'll be scary but also exciting and a whole new start... as cheesy as that sounds. It reminds us how it's so easy to just forget everything and live life in the moment rather than worrying all the time and getting stuck in the past.

My Group's Final Edit

Here is my group's edit of the 5ive workshop footage:

Prelim Task Evaluation

1. Did you enjoy the workshop day? What were your best bits and why?
The workshop day was so much fun that it was hard to believe that it was a compulsory part of our A-level coursework! Even though the day was long, I didn't get particularly tired because we had plenty of breaks and all the dancing got our energy and adrenaline constantly pumping. I particularly enjoyed the freestyle dance scenes, because we all got to just stand there and completely let loose, dancing like crazy, and the more energy you put in, the better the footage looked! This was the kind of thing I was looking forward to, as although I'm not really into acting, I have been dancing for years and I love it so it was great that everyone got to specialise in the areas they felt most confident in, as well as trying out new things, as I tend to shy away from being on-camera for most media projects.

I also think that spending so much time working together in one space at one time brought all the year 12 media students much closer and I really enjoyed working with everyone. Despite not being a 5ive band member, I still had loads to do and everyone was participating as much as possible which was good for all of us, and of course fair. It was also great working with all the crew, and being taught by a professional director was especially beneficial.

2. What did you learn from participating in the workshop?
I learnt what it was like on a real music video shoot and how long the hours are. I also got the chance to work with professionals like Jake who are great at their job. We were told that it was important to shoot the entire song from one set-up, even though that's not what we did during the workshop as we were re-creating a video rather than creating our own, so we knew actually what footage we wanted. I also learnt the importance as having to constantly be on standby in case you are needed for your scenes or if you are needed to fill in for anyone, like when the band needed a break. Although the day was scheduled to end at 6pm, we were prepared to be there for another 2 hours in case everything didn't go exactly to plan, which of course it didn't, and usually doesn't in a real shoot either.

It was exciting to work with really expensive professional equipment too, especially the track which I'd never seen in real life before, and the camera the video was shot on was amazing and made everything look so nicely shot even before editing. I also learnt how much lighting is used on a typical indoor shoot (a lot!) and how hot actors and performers must get in front of them. We were also lucky enough to be able to watch the live footage from the camera on a monitor, so we could see straight away what the shots looked like when we weren't on camera ourselves.

3. Are you pleased with the footage and your edit? Is it how you expected it to look?
I am so pleased with the footage; we were all looking forward to seeing it over the weekend after the shoot, and on Monday morning when we finally got to view it it looked just as good as we'd hoped. The camera makes such a difference, as even if we'd shot the exact same footage on a standard video camera it wouldn't have looked anywhere near as good. It was also very funny to watch ourselves dancing and getting really into character!

Our group decided not to edit the footage into an exact replica of the original 5ive video, as otherwise there would be multiple versions of the same thing amongst the classes. Instead, we made our own version that differs slightly but still uses the same choppy editing, jump cuts and slow-motion dancing. This gave us some creative scope and the video a fresh look.


4. How do you think your workshop experiences will impact on your approach to next term's music video coursework?
As I mentioned, a valuable lesson to learn was to always shoot too much footage rather than too little, because storyboards always change, so shoot the whole video from every set-up whenever possible. Apart from that, it was good to see who the best performers are, as the 5ive members especially did a great job, which is useful to know as it may impact our casting decisions next term.

Re-Edit Task

For this week's task we had to work in pairs to re-edit together a section of the 5ive video that had been cut up into shot types.
The first thing we did was put a small version of the finished clip in the corner of the screen so we could see exactly what we were aiming for.
We then went through the clip frame by frame and found the corresponding shot types in the cut-up clips and placed them onto the performance bed to fit exactly with the real clip in the corner.

Here is mine and Megan's finished re-edit:



The task was tricky as a lot of the shots were very similar so we had to make sure to pick the right one, and because of the fast-paced editing a lot of shots were only about a second long so it was difficuly to find the exact clip and cut it to the exact right length.

From the re-edit task I learnt how important discontinuity is in music videos. Unlike the rules of continuity we learnt during our film unit last term, music videos have very different conventions. For example, often there are cuts from wide shots to close-ups, or cuts between very similar shot types and distances. Shots rarely last for more than a few seconds before cutting to keep the exciting pace of the video and the clips are often cut to the exact beat of the music.
Another important thing I learnt from the task is the fan/band relationship. Throughout the video, the 5ive members are seen dancing amongst the other crowd members and dancers, giving a sense of community and group fun, so the viewers of the video also feel immersed in the crowd and as if they are on the same level as the band.
It was also helpful to learn that despite the large amount of cuts in the video, there are only actually a few different set-ups, but clever editing makes it look like there are a lot more. This is an important thing to keep in mind when working on my own music video next term.

Group 2's Lipsync

To practice for the Preliminary Task Shoot at the end of term and for the real coursework project itself, I shot and edited a lipsync to Five's 'Everybody Get Up' along with my group members Charley and Odelia. It was a lot of fun, surprisingly exhausting, and we all got very into it, which was good as it made the finished footage look a lot more realistic and entertaining.
We played around with different shot types, angles and distances to vary it up and we edited in a choppy style, not holding any shot for more than a few seconds to keep the the usual fast-paced style of a music video.
I tried to make sure I sang the words rather than just mimed, but whilst watching the footage back I noticed that some of my lip-syncing doesn't look as realistic as it could, so I learnt something important from this task and would definitely like to get together with some of the other media students to make another video, as everyone would benefit from some more lip-syncing practice.

Although my lip syncing sometimes doesn't look as effective as it should do, that doesn't really matter as the female parts in the Five video don't sing much. I would like to audition to play any of the girls really, but my preference would be clicking fingers girl if I had to choose one.

Here is our final edit: