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Music Video Director

Andy Morahan is a renowned music video director who has worked with many notable artists since making his first video in 1984. His most famous video is "November Rain" by Guns N' Roses, which cost $1.5 million to create and won awards. The epic video uses sweeping shots, varying lighting, and edited scenes to depict the narrative of a troubled marriage and funeral. Other noteworthy music videos mentioned are the animated video for "Do I Wanna Know?" by Arctic Monkeys, the thermographic camera-filmed video for "Stockholm Syndrome" by Muse, and the space and Chernobyl-filmed video for "Marooned" by Pink Floyd.

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113 views3 pages

Music Video Director

Andy Morahan is a renowned music video director who has worked with many notable artists since making his first video in 1984. His most famous video is "November Rain" by Guns N' Roses, which cost $1.5 million to create and won awards. The epic video uses sweeping shots, varying lighting, and edited scenes to depict the narrative of a troubled marriage and funeral. Other noteworthy music videos mentioned are the animated video for "Do I Wanna Know?" by Arctic Monkeys, the thermographic camera-filmed video for "Stockholm Syndrome" by Muse, and the space and Chernobyl-filmed video for "Marooned" by Pink Floyd.

Uploaded by

Jack
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Music Video Director Andy Morahan

Andy Morahan in a music video director with many famous music video to his name. He was
born in 1958, making his first music video in 1984. He has worked with many notable artists such as
Guns n Roses, Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson, Bon Jovi, AC/DC and many more.

My favourite video of his is the video to November Rain by Guns n Roses. The video infuses
odd visuals, narrative elements and live performances from the band including the famous
Slash/church scene. This scene features many sweeping helicopter shots of Slash playing a guitar
solo in the middle of a New Mexican desert. Morahan cross cuts this with scenes of greatly varying
lighting and tone. For instance, the video starts showing Axl Rose getting into bed on the night
before his wedding day, this scene is very
dark to the point where you can only
really see a silhouette of the Guns lead
singer. Despite this, Morahan did not hold
back on his use of colour blue, to be
precise many different shades that are
present in this short introduction sequence
are then carried for forward to the next
scene which is slightly more conventional
for a music video. After a dissolve transition
we are greeted with a panning shot of a large audatorium housing many excited fans and the band
themselves, bathed in the same blue light as the scene previous. Subtle continuity like this can be
found in many of Morahans videos. Summed up the narrative of the video tells the story of a man
starting a troubled marriage. After a prefect wedding, the video ends in tragedy when we see the
funeral of the bride at the end. Scenes from this narrative as well as live performanes and some
seemingly unrelated scenes are edited together to create an epic feel that accentuates thet gravitas
of the song.

The video to cost $1.5 million ($2.5M adjusting for inflation) to create and won an MTV
Video Music Award for Best Cinematography, it also won first place on MTVs Top 100 Music
Videos later that year. This firmly cements this video and its director in the mainstream side of the
music industry.

Other Noteworthy Music Videos


Do I wanna know? Arctic Monkeys
Directed by David Wilson and animated by BlinkInk.
David Wilson has created music videos for several other songs, such as Titanium by David
Guetta.
Influenced by cartoonists Robert crumb and Gary Gutierrez.
Video users oscillating lines to represent different elements of the song, like the guitars or
vocalists. These effects create a jarring and psychedelic experience.
Simple lines soon turn to full animations of people and cars, each scene transitioning to the
next in a unique way from the last, making the video intriguing.
This video contains no live footage as it was all animated.

Stockholm syndrome Muse


Directed by Thomas Kirk and inspired by the 1987 Schwarzenegger film Predator.
Entire video filmed with thermographic cameras, which visualises temperature differences in
the scene.
Made on a budget recorded in a warehouse in Hackney with a few rented thermal vision
cameras. The video came into existence as an excuse for the band to mess around with the
thermal imaging cameras, when the footage was later reviewed and edited they decided
that it would make a good music video.

Marooned Pink Floyd


Directed by Aubrey Powell with Hipgnosis, a design group based in London.
The video starts with time-lapse shots of earth from the ISS, then shots of inside the ISS with
the lights turned off, then drone shots of Chernobyl.

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