Warren Fu is on set when he takes our call, although he’s currently not surrounded by any famous musicians or a particularly cool location. “I’m just working on a commercial right now,” says the Chicago-born director and designer. “This is the kind of stuff most of us directors do to pay the bills in-between music videos. It’s nothing too exciting – it’s just to tide us over so that we’re allowed to do the creative stuff.”
As far as that side of things is concerned, you’re unlikely to find many better in this particular field than Fu. Although he only properly got into the game around a decade ago, making a video for The Strokes’ ‘You Only Live Once’ (no, not that version), he’s gone on to make videos for massive names like Daft Punk, Weezer, Haim, CHVRCHES and The Weeknd. From big-budget epics to simple, effective performance videos, Fu has truly run the gamut with his body of work – and it’s something he believes is reflective of his own perception of what makes a truly great music video.
Warren’s alternate clip for The Strokes’ ‘You Only Live Once’
“What I appreciate and what I love about music videos is really all over the map,” says Fu. “I love choreography. I love visual art. I love an animated video that’s really painterly and beautiful. I love videos that have a conceptual side to them that comes out of left-field – it can be ugly, and maybe even low-budget, but the concept is impactful. There are such endless possibilities with the form of the music video. You can make a video like ‘Smooth Criminal’ by Michael Jackson – something with flashiness and with stellar choreography. You can do what someone like Spike Jonze does and pull off something with a crazy idea. Some directors have a really strong aesthetic taste. For me, what I love about music videos is that they’re constantly changing.”
I love videos that have a conceptual side to them that comes out of left-field – it can be ugly, and maybe even low-budget, but the concept is impactful.
Although Fu himself may not be a household name – he’s perfectly fine being a behind-the-scenes sort of guy, for what it’s worth – there are several moments throughout his videography that stand out as instantly recognisable. His videos from the Random Access Memories era of Daft Punk – including the distinctive, simple shininess of ‘Get Lucky’ – have been viewed millions of times. His latest clip, in which French band Phoenix perform the song ‘J-Boy’ on a fictional ’80s talk show, borrows some of that aesthetic and camps it up all the way to 11. Hell, he even sent Weezer into space a couple of years ago with the moon-dwelling silliness of ‘Back to the Shack’. According to Fu, a lot of the best parts of his videography have to do with the keen eye and creative vision of the artists he works with.
“A lot of the time, there aren’t a whole lot of other people involved with the process,” he explains. “It can often just be you and the artist coming to an agreement on what you want the video to be. I’ve been lucky enough to work with a lot of artists that have real creative freedom. These are the kind of artists that don’t have label heads coming after them and telling them what videos they have to make; or demanding that they just do straight pop videos. I guess the closest that I’ve come to a pop performance video was with Haim for ‘If I Could Change Your Mind’ – and even that came from a place of pure love. I’ve known those girls for years, and I know that the dancing and choreography in that video wasn’t done sarcastically – it was playful, and a proper tribute to the kind of videos they grew up loving themselves.”
The closest Warren has come to directing a ‘pop’ video
Over the 30-plus years of their cultural lifespan, the trajectory of music videos has been a fascinating one. Formerly a televised entity, the age of the internet – and particularly sites like YouTube and Vimeo – have impacted greatly on the consumption and development of music videos. Although pop videos were, for a time, considered worthless on account of their product placement and soulless conduction; thousands of fascinating and entertaining music videos are released each year across a myriad of genres. Fu sees the evolution as natural, and still thinks people get just as much out of a great music video now as they did in the boom of MTV.
The reality is that music videos are as relevant as ever. If you look at all the top hits on YouTube, it’s all music videos… As a cultural thing, it’s still as powerful as ever.
“It’s so easy to be negative about all of that sort of thing,” he says. “I never got to work in the heyday of music videos, but a lot of the people I’ve worked with did. They’ll go on about how the budgets aren’t what they used to be, saying they’re on $30,000 when they used to be making clips for $3 million. The reality is that music videos are as relevant as ever. If you look at all the top hits on YouTube, it’s all music videos. It’s The Weeknd, it’s Bieber, it’s Psy.
“As a cultural thing, it’s still as powerful as ever. They’re being watched millions of times – some of those Lady Gaga videos are probably into the billions by now. They’re considerably more popular than any of the other types of videos on YouTube. The power and impact of these videos is always going to be significant, no matter what way we’re watching them and no matter what the budgets are. Music drives culture.”
Warren Fu will be appearing at the Clipped Music Video Festival this Saturday at Sun Studios in Sydney as a part of the Vivid Festival.
