Auteur Theory - Hype Williams

For my Auteur Theory, I am going to be looking American director Hype Williams who was born in New York. I will be looking at his videos and the techniques he uses and the style of music videos that he makes.

Williams has made many music videos for artists such as LL Cool J, Notorious BIG, 2Pac,Coldplay, Christina Aguilera and many more. Alongside music video, Hype Williams also directed films such as: 'Belly' and 'Speed Racer'

A signature style used by Williams in the majority of his music videos is the use of the fisheye lens, which distorts the camera view around the central focus. This was used by Williams and cinematographer John Perez in Busta Rhymes’s “Gimme Some More” and “The Rain” by Missy Elliott.

Another style that Williams used involved shots in regular wide screen ration while a second shot split and placed into the lower and upper bars. Videos that include this are “So Sick” by Ne-Yo and “In My Hood” by Young Jeezy. In addition to this he frequently makes use of aerial shots, which often move backwards and forwards. Some techniques can be seen in Aaliyah’s “Rock The Boat”, “She’s A Bitch” by Missy Elliott and “Only U” by Ashanti. It is a method often used by Williams, which allow his videos to be dynamic and multi-dimensional, rather than using static camera angles.

Since 2003, Williams has adopted a signature style combining a centre camera focus on the artists body upward and a solid background colour with a soft different colour lighting being shown in the centre of the background, so it gives a sense of illumination of the background by the foreground subject. This has been displayed in “Gold Digger” by Kanye West and Beyoncé’s “Video Phone”