mark romanek: cinematic music videos
by stephanie jorgl

07.25.03



when mark romanek came to london to do publicity for his first film, “static,” he got the chance to meet several of the musicians whose music had been featured in the cult hit. one of the artists, matt johnson of the the, asked him to do a music video and this prompting set romanek in a whole new direction.

“i remember enjoying it and feeling like i had a knack for it. and i liked the fact that you could kind of do anything really and weren’t burdened by a narrative or dialogue. it was just sort of a new medium of pure poetic filmmaking,” says romanek.

though romanek really wanted to make feature films, he decided to continue making videos to generate a body of work and to gain experience. “i also realized that i needed some time to become a person who had something worth saying in a movie. so my experience making music videos became sort of an elite film school and a place to develop a voice and technical craft.”

a 10-year tangent

romanek’s music videos met great success and romanek soon found himself on a 10-year tangent from his dream of becoming a feature filmmaker. this tangent also just happened to coincide with the real explosion of mtv in the early and mid-90s.

“it was a time when mtv was a vital, interesting area, when it was still showing videos and when the directors doing them included some of the best directors in the world, like david fincher, jonathan glazer and spike jonze,” says romanek. “i mean these were really great filmmakers who happened to be making music videos. so it was very inspiring and exciting.”

romanek brings artistic and cinematic sensibility to his music videos, and is well recognized for his work for nine inch nails, madonna, david bowie, the red hot chili peppers, johnny cash and others.

cinema in high school

romanek aspired to become a feature filmmaker from the time he first saw “2001” at the age of 9. fortunately, he was able to attend a very progressive public high school near chicago, new trier east, which offered a four-year cinema production and theory class to students.

“the teachers came from the chicago art institute, which was a bastion of hippie non-narrative structuralistic, experimental cinema,” explains romanek. “so, they were exposing these suburban kids to the work of stan brakhage, michael snow, kenneth anger, jonas mekas, jean cocteau and andy warhol — really, really out there stuff.

“but it was very fortuitous and mind-expanding to be exposed to that stuff at such an impressionable age… to actually see a stan brakhage film and get it, have it talk to you and really understand why it’s amazing, while all your friends are just going to the theater to see ‘jaws,’” he says.

“but at the same time, you could go see ‘jaws’ and think it’s great, too. you got this sense of the spectrum of what cinema could be. it could be commercial or it could be pure art. it could be anything really,” he says. “and i think that really informed my videomaking and, hopefully, my filmmaking, where there’s this sense that there really are no rules.”

from concept to screen

when working on music videos, romanek always writes the concept himself. “but that’s the joy of it — that i can come up with my own idea, and i collaborate with some people that i’ve been working with, in some cases, for over a decade,” he says. “so it’s really easygoing and i can get something out of my head right onto the screen pretty much just as i imagine it.”

romanek works with a faithful team of regulars and edits most of his work on macs with robert duffy of spotwelders in venice, ca. most of his videos have been shot by harris savides, who shot “the game,” or jeff cronenweth, who shot “one hour photo” and “fight club,” and more recently, jeff cutter. “you find people who are brilliant and easy to work with and take chances, and who work hard. why would you switch?” asks romanek.

next page: making "one hour photo"

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