Music Video Directors - Spike Jonze

Music Video Directors

Spike Jonze:

Spike Jonze is an American film and music video director, film producer, screen director and actor. He has been an active member of these industries since 1989, twenty years after his birth on October 22, 1969. He first rose to major fame in Hollywood after directing the film "Being John Malkovic", which earned him his first and only Academy Award Nomination for Best Director. His most notable films include "Being John Malkovic", the 2002 film "Adaption", and the 2009 film "Where the Wild Things Are", which he co-wrote. However, Spike Jonze is best known for his contribution to the music video industry, directing videos for many respected and popular artists, such as Kanye West, the Beastie Boys and The Notorious B.I.G. 

Music Videos:

Spike Jonze has worked on over thirty music videos in his career, working on videos for very popular artists of their time period. For example, he worked on three videos for the Beastie Boys in 1994, during the band's peak as artists, meaning that his work would have been very well recognised. He has also worked on songs for Daft Punk, Bjork, The Chemical Brothers, and R.E.M all during the 90s, which could have lead to his Hollywood film director break, as all of his videos would have been seen and praised by a large audience.

This is the Beastie Boys song, "Ricky's Theme", and was the second time that Spike Jonze collaborated with the band, but was the first time he did so in 1994. Jonze also wrote the music video (like he would do a movie), and "Ricky's Theme" was a series of Beastie Boys collaborations that would take place in the year of 94; the videos that followed suit would be the very popular song, "Sabotage", and following that was "Sure Shot". Both of these videos can be seen at the bottom of the page.

Most recently, Spike Jonze has collaborated with two of the most popular music artists of our generation - Kanye West and Jay-Z. He worked on "Flashing Lights" with Kanye West, which he also co-directed with Mr.West, from the artists third studio album, Homecoming in 2008. In 2011 he worked with both Kanye West and Jay-Z, as a duo, for "Otis", which was a single from their collaborative number one album "Watch the Throne". Kanye West's and Spike Jonze's video for the song "Flashing Lights", can be seen here. "Otis" can be viewed at the bottom of the page.   

Awards:

Throughout Jonze's career, he has amassed many awards and nominations for his work. The nominations and awards taken from his feature films can be seen here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_Jonze#Filmography

For his work on "Praise You" by Fatboy Slim, Jonze received awards for Best Direction, Breakthrough, and Best Choreography at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards. The video for which he won the awards can be seen here:

The videos which were mentioned earlier can be seen here, and are some of Jonze's most recognised and earliest work, including Jay - Z & Kanye West and The Beastie Boys.