In the article series Sound and Vision we take a look at music videos from notable directors. This week we look at several music videos by Jake Schreier.
Currently Jake Schreier is Hollywood's (and especially Marvel's) new go-to-guy, after the moderate success of Thunderbolts, and being tapped for the X-men-reboot. However modest his beginnings, with the small indie-drama Robot and Frank and the young adult-adaptation Paper Towns, he was the buzz of the town because of some of his music videos. His music videos show a singular voice and vision that doesn't necessarily translate that well to his feature film work, but the echoes of which still can be felt in some instances. Let's go over why Jake Schreier's music video work is well worth being sought out, and how it differs from his feature work (or doesn't).
The most typical works Jake Schreier made are for Francis and the Lights, a band whom he was the keyboardist of once upon a time. The first music video he directed for them, The Top (below) already showcases the kind of music video that Schreier would become known for. In it, Francis dances wildly with his back to the camera against a very minimalistic backdrop. The camera eventually turns around him, showing him in a spotlight. Eventually the lights come crashing down around him in a very abrupt manner, burning out on the ground and leaving Francis in darkness. The elements for almost every Francis and the Lights video by Schreier are here: a wildly dancing Francis, a minimalist set, a mostly one-take camera movement with some elaborate choreography, some very experimental lighting designs, and a pay-off to the set that is slightly conceptual.
Darling It's Alright for instance, uses alternating spotlights to showcase the different musicians, eventually putting all the lights on to showcase a final dance. Like a Dream (also below) shows Francis hopping and stepping in a flowerfield, with back lighting from the sun, so he is mostly seen in silhouette. Eventually that music video turns into a more conceptual twist on Hitchcock's North By Northwest, paying off the deliberately languid pace of the piece. Friends, co-signed by Kanye West and Bon Iver, plays around with a white square in the middle, that eventually is incorporated in the dance as the conceptual pay-off. May I Have This Dance, with Chance the Rapper, does something similar, but also plays around with mirror images. But they all have similarly minimalist set design and lighting and center on dance. There is something very similar happening in Thunderbolts, where the villain of the piece is mostly a backlit silhouette, who casts people into a dream-like void, existing of mostly minimalist set design pieces. Both the light and shadows of the music videos are there, as is the emphasis on minimalist space.
The other music videos Schreier made (even some more for Francis and the Lights) fall largely into three groups, even though i can't go over them all. You have the minimalist dances and performance pieces, as showcased by the aforementioned videos and the once he made for HAIM, Cashmere Cat and Kanye West. You also have a few music videos for Cashmere Cat and Benny Blanco that use typeface on screen to tell stories in the subtitles that either strengthen the image or counter it. In those videos the typeface are almost like a persona or narrator, commenting on what's happening on screen and sharing the inner most thoughts and feelings of the artist. In their own way they are minimalist. Highlight in this style is Cashmere Cat's 9 (After Coachella) (also below)
And then there are the more story driven pieces, that are also quite conceptual: take for instance We Cry Together (also below), made for Kendrick Lamar, that plays out the dialogue between the protagonist and his girlfriend as a sort of one-room play, where they bicker, break-up, make-up and fuck, before the camera pulls out and shows this all was a set. It is a trick that Schreier uses several times, but always with a twist, where he eventually showcases the artificiality of the proceedings. It is partly seen in his music video for Chance the Rapper's Same Drugs, that similarly pulls back on a performance between Chance and a puppet, to reveal Chance has been living in a world of muppets.
Selena Gomez's and Benny Blanco's Younger and Hotter than Me also is fully set in the world of a film-set, where Gomez's emotional break-down is portrayed by letting her live on the backlot. It is the kind of artificiality with an emotional resonance to it that was part of Paper Towns, which gets its title from the notion of non-existent towns that only exist on paper. It is also part of Thunderbolts, where the machinations behind the scene first try to get rid of B-tier superheroes, before revealing them to be The New Avengers, somewhat ironically. It is both a meta-textual commentary on how Marvel operates, an in-world exploration of the politics around superhero structures ánd an example of Schreier's interest in artifice, metatextuality and how fake things can become real.
Thunderbolts also shows his interest in anti-heroes, which might be why Schreier chose to work with both Kanye West and Justin Bieber when both were considered toxic (but before Kanye went full-on nazi). There is the sense that Schreier tries to see the good in people, which is part of Robot and Frank and Thunderbolts.
Finally there is a propulsiveness to his films, that is best showcased in his music videos for HAIM. HAIM's I Want You Back (finally below), my favorite music Schreier made, constantly keeps upping the ante in the choreography, but also does a lot with a little. First one HAIM sister starts walking. Then after a fairly long 40 seconds the other two sisters join, and the very first choreography shows up: just a headtilt on the beat. It is enough. For now. Then they start to alternate doing very small hand choreography, and before the chorus is over they disband and follow one of them who just starts walking. At the bridge the other two join in with the walking and the next chorus starts a more expressive dance. Finally we follow the last sister walking, who now is singing along for the first time in the song. The next bridge starts with them powerwalking towards the camera and full on skipping in front of the camera before the camera pulls back in a helicopter shot and reveals them standing in a desolate downtown LA. It is both minimalist and a lot. It is the kind of video Paul Thomas Anderson also made for HAIM, but here it is done even better.
The latter pieces he made for HAIM are similarly propulsive and minimalist dance pieces, but they take on a slightly different meaning as they were made smack dab in the middle of the pandemic. The video's to I Know Alone and Don't Wanna are not that far removed from the stuff Schreier made before for Francis and the Lights and Cashmere Cat and HAIM themselves. But the minimalism and the distancing effect is by necessity this time around, because of social distancing. It gives some gravitas to the videos, which otherwise are kind of a repeat of things Schreier has done better before. Schreier's music videos are so singular and of one piece that some repetition is bound to happen. But I can't think of that many other music video makers in the past fifteen years who have this big of a signature style as a music video artist, in the same way the likes of David Fincher, Michel Gondry, Chris Cunningham, Hype Williams or Joseph Kahn had in the nineties. It is no surprise he has become the new it-guy in Hollywood.