Auter Theory

Auter theory was first created in the 1950s by French cinema critics such as Adre Breton. La Cahier du cinema was their publication that discussed who shouldn't be recognised as an auter and those who were chosen had particular characteristics, these characteristics were found on their stylistics, structual, thematic or about their process.

We looked at some of the work by most recognised auters such as Jonathan Glazier, Michel Gondry, Anton Gorbijn, Spike Jonze and Chris Cunningham. The auter that I have examined to identify it's signature was Jonathan Glazier, which meant that I had to watch different videos that he had directed.

The first video was by Jamiroquai called virtual insanity and the setting was a simple room with walls that emphasizes some kind of mental hospital, which links with it's title "insanity". The furnitaures move about as Jamiroquai dances around them, then a black hawk comes out of nowhere and just flies across the room. At the end blood floods out filling half of the room red which really stood out as of the plain white room, meanwhile he moves towards the camera without walking but simply by how they have made things move to trick our minds.

The dead weather "treat me like your mother". The setting is in a field and it starts off with a male and a female, dressed in metal/rock outfit, they used a track camera to follow them both as they walked across the field. At the end of the scene the male and the female just starts shooting eachother with a machine gun, showing no blood and or other gorey effect but simply just to show its random bizarreness.

Rabbits in the headlights by Unlike... a guy which looked quite insane as he was walking in the middle of the road, not caring to get hit whilst talking to himself and making movements as if someone was irritating him. The guy finally gets run over a few times but showing no hurt done to him he gets up and carrys on doing the same thing.

After looking at those three video clips from different artists directed by Jonathan Glazier, I've noticed that Glazier has a theme of bizzare insanity image which have been clearly shown on how the actors in the video are represented, also the lyrics from Jamiroquai and its setting. They have all been set out to look like a reality scene with people that are somehow insane or disorientated in the head, which haven't been explained to how they might have gotten into that situation. The contrasts of the setting and the actions and or story makes the audience reflect to the surrealism of it's actual reality. For example in the video by Unlike, where the guy is walking in the middle of the road most likely trying to kill himself is set in an underground road, where people driving past are trying to avoid him, this does happen if one chooses to do so. It can be seen as a reality story but it seems surreal as it only happens if anyone ever dares to do it. The insanity theme which he clarifies from the video "vertical insanity" shows that those are based from an insane person's head which makes the surrealism effect.

The mise-en-scene are all quite similar and simple, set in either fields and other places that we have access to. However the use of camera work that he has mainly used in all videos, tracking, are all linked to show the same effect that follows the insane character within the video, as if the camera is the Dr and the charater playing the crazy person role is the patient.

Another video directed by Glazier, is of a girl who drank excessive amount of pure vodka spirits, the camera work used to interpret the realism of this video is hand held, and the effect that the hand held gives is very effective, as the girl downs the alcohol she eventually starts showing impressions of someone being really drunk but somehow not yet paralletic and or in any way not dead with alcohol poisoning. The unsteadyness of the view of her reflects to what she's feeling.

There was one deigestic sound that was used in the video "rabbits in your headlights", where as the guy walked through the tunnel he spoked to himself, the deigestic sound proves that this guy is crazy, we don't understand what he is saying but that is exactly the point of it, because what he was saying was a load of nonsense as to what he was doing.