Director's Study - Marc Klasfeld

Marc Klasfeld is an American music video director who has also written and directed commercials, independent films and documentaries. He has directed over two hundred music videos for many successful artists. He is a graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

On March 29, 2010 Klasfeld released a viral video of a mock-elementary school play of the Al Pacino-starred film, Scarface, entitled "Scarface School Play". The Viral racked up more than 2 million views in 24 hours becoming one of the most popular virals of all time while generating attention from major networks like FoxNews, ABC, CNN, and CBS.

Scarface School Play:


Interview with Marc Klasfeld about Scarface School Play:


He is also the founder of Rockhard, a production company that also houses directors Ray Kay, Tony Petrossian, Sarah Chatfield and Steve Jocz.
Rockhard films: http://www.rhfilms.com/featured/

Music video analysis - Klasfeld's work:
I have chosen to analyse the ‘Nelly – Ride With Me’ and the ‘Avenged Sevenfold – Bat Country’ videos as they both won MTV’s best new artist video award in 2001 and 2006 respectivily. By comparing the two video’s I can deduce some of Marc Klasfeld’s directors techniques which he uses in his music videos.

Nelly - Ride Wit Me ft. St. Lunatics - Winner 2001 MTV Best New Artist Video Award:


Avenged Sevenfold – Bat Country – Winner 2006 MTV Best New Artist Video Award:

Both videos are mainly performance and concept based and have very high preduction values as a lot of post preduction effects are used such as colour changes and CGI in the bat country video (see picture below).

Both videos also have a few recuring mototifs, the most noticable of this being filming outside in open, almost desert like areas, a car or vehicle which the artist or band is driving, and a lot of voyeuristic treatment of the female body. The first picture below is from Nelly’s video and the secound from the Avenged Sevenfold video.

• Both videos have the artist with extra’s (most of the time, women) dancing around or behind them when they are performing.
  
  
• Both videos mainly consist of jump cuts for edits and fast paced editing, the edits are occaisnly on the beat, but most of the time are randomly timed. However the speed of the editing decreases in the Bat Country video when the song reaches it’s quieter part and the jump cuts change to fades. This shows the relationship between the music and the visuals.
  
  
• Both videos have a direct link between links and visuals. For example in the Bat Country video, for the lyric “Don’t be surprised when things aren’t what they seem” we see a few women dancing but they have lizard like tongues and tails.
  
  
• Both videos use slow mo for close up voyeuristic images of the female body.