Case study/presentation of a music video director

I am looking into many bollywood songs and music videos. Bollywood songs come from both films and individual artist(s). Nowadays, Indian artists have become more modern by introducing individual artists and groups which produce their own songs unlike the old typical tradition, which would be that every song would have to be born from a bollywood film. This is an old tradition for hindi songs, and is still on-going.

Because most hindi songs are from films, it is difficult to find who the music video directors are. After searching for hours, i finally figured that songs from films do not have music video directors. This job is done by the main director. This isn't really hard to believe as most hindi songs are jus dancing and are less complicated than english music videos.

I am interested in both film songs and songs sung by groups. So therefore i am going to talk about video directing for both.

Firstly i am going to talk about film songs. There is one particular film which has inspired me with its music video's, which is 'Jab we met'. The reasons why i find Jab we met music videos interesting is because they are quite traditional, just as any film song would be. The videos involve many people dressed in tradtional bright and colourful clothing doing traditional indian dance moves.

Imtiaz Ali is the director of the famous film 'Jab we met'. He uses brilliant camera techniques to make the video affective and continuous.

From watching the music video 'Nagada Nagada' i have noticed a few techniques he uses, such as compostioning the camera perfecting to get the framing correct to what he planned to have.
Imtiaz Ali also uses a vary of camera angles. The camera shots he uses work perfectly together. For example, the music video shows a close up of 'Shahid Kapoor's' face and foot, this is done to show each detail of the video individually. At one point we see a close up of Shahid Kapoor and we see Kareena kapoor in the background, however shahid is more in focus than kareena and gradually starts to focus on both of them. This is affective to the viewers as it says we should be looking at shahid first (depths of field). The way the camera is used to change from different angles is shot very smoothly the viewers can see this as the camera moves along to the beat of the music, this makes it look more effective and precise.

Another technique i have notied is that Imtiaz Ali doesn't switch from scene to scene. He only uses one huge set filled with many people dressed bright and colourful. This makes it less complicated and also more interesting as it shows the viewers how much you can get from just one scene.


Imtiaz Ali-director - WikiPedia

Imtiaz Ali born on 16th June 1971. He is an indian film director and writer. His 2007 film 'Jab we met', was a runaway hit in India.
Ali began his career directing serials including Kurushetraa for Zee TV and Imtihaana for Star Plus. After 7 years of doing so, he gradually moved on to Bollywood films starting with Socha Na Tha in 2005 with Abhay Deol and Ayesha Takia. In 2004, he also made a cameo appearance in Anurag Kashyap's Black Friday [5]. Within 2 of his films he has proven he is one of the best among the romantic comedy movie director. Even the box office failure of the movie Socha Na Tha it was critically praised for the romance in the movie. His next film, Jab We Met, starring Shahid Kapoor and Kareena Kapoor, was a major hit at the Indian box office. His latest direction Love Aaj Kal, starring Saif Ali Khan and Deepika Padukone was a huge box office success.