In the article series Sound and Vision we take a look at music videos from notable directors. This week we look at George Michael's One More Try, directed by Tony Scott.
If I associate Tony Scott with two things, it's immaculate lighting, and flashy editing. The latter part of the Tony Scott-equation might only have been introduced quite late in his career, as there is a stark difference between the editing of films like Revenge, The Hunger and Top Gun and let's say, Deja-vu, Man On Fire and Domino. Which is why it is no wonder that the music video I'm discussing today, the one for George Michael's One More Try, is fairly subdued in its editing, as it is early-day Tony Scott. But still, it is quite the surprise how slow the editing in this video truly is.
The song was written by George Michael after the disbanding of a relationship, but ten years before his public coming out. Still, there is some subtle homo-eroticism in the song, with Michael addressing a 'teacher', playing on eroticized power dynamics and mentorship. It is not far removed from some of the homo-eroticism present in the then-current works of Tony Scott, like the bisexual vampires of The Hunger, the glistening abs and homosocial bonding of Top Gun, or the sadomasochistic revenge-lust of Revenge. Other Scott-isms present are the light flowing through see-through white drapes, seen in all the aforementioned titles. Nobody does eighties-style lighting, set-dressing and fog machines like Tony Scott, except for maybe Russell Mulcahy.
What is most striking about the video though is its restraint. Like the song, which only uses the title one time at the very end, this music video is all about a slow-burn building of tension. George Michael's face isn't seen for quite some time in the video, almost always back-lit in a way where he is more silhouette than star. He is leaning against a wall in the first shot, which goes on for an almost embarrassingly slow 2 minutes. After, still lit in silhouette, we get a few more shots, fading into each other, making up for the lack of editing in the first part.
But Michael's face only shows after the music video is almost three minutes in, of a song that is roughly six minutes. The great dramatic trick here is letting Michael move his face from left to right to left on the beat of the song as soon as he comes into vision, making a dramatic entry with just his emotion and movement. But almost immediately Scott cuts back to the first shot. This is a masterclass in grab and release, intercutting close-ups of Michael's face, with more opaque shots of Michael's visage in a fog-upped mirror, or his entire silhouette. After the first two minutes, there are many dissolves and cuts, but they are always in service of Michael's movement, words and feelings.
This is a great music video, showing the two biggest strengths of Scott as a director: using editing and lighting to heighten the emotions of the characters. He would go to great lengths with the likes of Domino and Deja-vu, underrated masterpieces that are almost expressionistic in their lighting, to really put us into the mind-set of frazzled and hectic characters, who are losing what little grasp they had on reality. That Tony Scott could also do something more subtle, like in this music video, is proof enough to shut down the nay-sayers of latter day-Scott movies, who feel like he went too far with the focus-ramping and oversaturation. It's not like he wasn't able to reign it in, he just didn't want to.