Director Research

Akiva Schaffer is a member of a band that has recently hit the charts, ‘Lonely Island’, as well as being one third of this band he also alongside edits many ‘SNL Digital Shorts’ they specialise in comedic music which suits the genre of Lonely Island. He has also had a small acting role in a film called ‘Hot Rod’ which he also directed. Akiva has also got a co-writer role on the American ‘Saturday Night Live’ and has contributed many things to ‘Channel 101’. Not only does Akiva Schaffer direct many of the videos for his own band but he has worked with other bands such as ‘We Are Scientists’ and ‘Eagles of Death Metal’. All together he has directed 12 music videos these spread across all different genres from serious videos just joke and comedic ones. Akiva has also got a emmy-winning song to his name ‘Dick in a box’ preformed with Justin Timberlake, just one high profile celebrity that Akiva has worked with the song won the ‘Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics’. Akiva is well known for the comedic side of his career as many of his songs are parodies of other famous songs and are very often found humorous; he first really kicked off his career as part of Lonely Island on YouTube and the internet as a whole. This helped him become a well known face now working with many well known celebrities such as Justin Timberlake, T-pain and Jack Black are just a few to be mentioned. The work that Akiva proves that the internet has helped to create lots of stars and made it more accessible for everyone this is one thing I like about him as well as his good ability to be serious and have the ability to help bands such as ‘We Are Scientists’ create a good video to the song ‘The Great Escape’ while he also has the ability to make a funny video suitable for a very different audience and made for a different type of person making him very away of the audiences he is targeting made clear in his videos.

Richard Ayoade is a lot like Akiva as he has acted parts in films and is known for his comedy, however he has also written and directed a lot more than Akiva, he is most famous for his work towards the ‘IT Crowd’. Richard was also involved in ‘The Mighty Boosh’ which was a large well known TV program. Unlike Akiva the music videos that Richard has directed have all been for indie bands such as ‘Arctic Monkeys’, ‘The last of the shadow puppets’, ‘Vampire Weekend’ and ‘Yeah yeah yeahs’ these videos are all rather serious and suit the songs they go to well, they are all very different ranging from ‘fluorescent adolescent’ a song about sexual tales of youth compared to ‘Vlad the impaler’ his latest work with ‘Kasabian’ which has a very different sound and meaning to it, showing the versatility and understanding Richard has of the music, this is needed as often his videos are more narrative than they are of the band performing. The different directors are very different in the way there videos go Richard has mainly narrative, the videos go along with the song with very little of the bands singing and performing, where as Akiva as well as them acting to the song they sing throughout the videos.