Sound And Vision: Grant Singer
In the article series Sound and Vision we take a look at music videos from notable directors. This week we look at Sam Smith's How Do You Sleep?, directed by Grant Singer.
Grant Singer made his feature debut with Reptile, recently released on Netflix, but to music video connoisseurs he has been an exciting name for well over ten years. Since storming on to the scene with a few music videos for Sky Ferreira and Travi$ Scott, if you wanted to look effortlessly cool you called Grant Singer. He worked with everyone who was hip and happening, like Ariel Pink, Skrillex, Ariana Grande, Lorde, Troye Sivan and The Weeknd, and excelled at a certain style of video that was earlier perfected by David Fincher, which I will dub the 'strike-a-pose'-video.
Named after Fincher's video for Madonna's Vogue, the 'strike-a-pose'-video is all about posturing. The coolness of the performer is rarely distracted by something like a story (always wafer thin), and the setting is there to make the performer look cooler, not overburden the visuals. Grant Singer is really good at these videos, adding just enough specificity to the settings and symbolism, to make it more than just a fashion shoot. But even when it is basically a fashion shoot, like in Camila Cabello's Never Be The Same, it's the coolest goddamn shoot you have seen. Singer has an eye for fashion and setting. To borrow the title of a Lorde song he directed the music video for: Singer is great at finding Perfect Places..
And in these settings, he lets the singer loose, only adding the necessary details to make the music video more than the sum of its parts. The Weeknd's I can't Feel My Face and The Hills are emblematic. Both of them are basically very simple in their plot line. In I Can't Feel My Face The Weeknd's dance performance lights the room on fire, before he himself is burned. And The Hills is just The Weeknd walking away from a car crash, but with the explosion timed in such a way it makes an impression. Both of these videos star Rick Wilder, who also shows up in The Weeknd's Tell Your Friends, in all of them playing a devilish figure. He also starred in Singer's video for Ariel Pink's Dayzed Inn Daydreams becoming Singer's unofficial muse for a while. Wilder, the singer from the glam rock band The Mau-Mau's, is a striking presence with his lanky figure and orange-painted hair. He is unnerving yet effortlessly cool, like most of Singer's videos.
It is Sam Smith's How Do You Sleep?, that is my pick of the week, though. A video that is all about posing and posturing, but where Singer finds these really weird and unnerving details in the setting, without it all coalescing into a story. It's the specificity of the locations, like Sam Smith performing in a hanging cage above BMX-bikers, that leaves an impression.
In his Netflix-film Reptile we see similar things happening: like the early video's Singer made, it is slightly reminiscent of the early films of David Fincher. But like Fincher, Singer finds ways to make a standard police procedural into something more, focusing on the minor details in setting and place. Benicio Del Toro plays a cop researching the murder of a real estate broker, and it is the ins and outs of this setting that keeps the film from feeling stale. There are some beautiful touches, like Del Toro becoming interested in the faucets that are installed at a murder scene, as an inspiration for his own home renovation. Location is everything according to the brokers. Singer gets that. He lets his actors and performers loose in settings filled with specific details, and lets them strike their pose. It is the electricity happening between performer and place that gives his work life.
Reptile might feel like a minor debut feature at times, but don't forget that some of the greats in the music video industry, like Fincher, or Jonathan Glazer or Michel Gondry, only hit it out of the park with their second feature. And honestly, Reptile is as strong an effort, if not stronger, than Gondry's Human Nature or Glazer's Sexy Beast. It's a promising calling card from a director who has already made several great music videos.
