Music Video Director.

Matthew Stawski is an American film-maker, who from a very young age has been involved in creating short films and music videos. Music played an influential part of his childhood, especially that of Motown, and in the present day, one of his passions is the Punk Rock genre.

Born in 1984, Stawski spent his teen years making short films and music videos with his friends, until at only 18 years old, directed several videos for the political band Anti-Flag, which premiered on TV stations (Fuse, MTVu) around the world. He then went on to achieve a Bachelor's degree of Film and Video with a directing concentration at Columbia College in Chicago, before finally moving to Los Angeles whereby he signed with Refused TV. During his free time, he has been developing a few musicals in which he plans on bringing to life in between the music videos that he directs.

To date, he has directed videos for a range of artists, including: Fall Out Boy, Paramore, Kanye West, All Time Low, Snoop Dogg, Tram, and Alkaline Trio.

His videos hold a distinctive, recognisable style. He tends to combine live action performances of the artist with animated illustration sequences which can either be a narrative (100 Little Curses by Street Sweeper Social Club) or a concept (Gimme Chemicals by The Pink Spiders) either way, creating a hyper-real environment. Of course, the tone of each individual video represents that of the band's genre, which mainly appear to Stawski's interest; punk rock. However depending on the song, the target audience is met by having a relevant themed video. Such as with both of the All Time Low videos he directed, they had a comedic style with lots of close ups of the band to appeal to their vastly teenage, female populated fan base. Whereas if you look at Shadetree Mechanics by The Bled, a post-hardcore band that include 'screamo' into their songs, the colour palette is rather dark, as is the general tone of the video.

With bands such as Fall Out Boy, Paramore and All Time Low who have a relatively younger target audience, responses left on their music videos on the website YouTube mostly consist of comments regarding the looks of the band members or just simply stating that the video is "awesome". However, on the video 'America's Suiteheart's' (FOB) one viewer went as far as to say: "cool video, the song... not so much" which shows that in some cases, Stawski's work prevails over that of the music produced by the artist. Another response left on this particular video is "The director was definitely tripping on some potent stuff when he thought this video up. Great song, fairly creepy video." These comments alone give a mixed response regarding the videos that Stawski creates, some more positive than others and for some viewers, the atmosphere conveyed in the video appears to unnerve them. 'Another Hero Lost' by Shadows Fall seems to be an anomaly within Stawski's work. With this video, it suits the seriousness of the song itself, and to most would create an emotional tone - thus no animation is used. Instead, there is footage showing families, and people, who you assume had family members who have died in various wars. This comment left by a viewer on YouTube, for me, sums up the overall audience response to this video; "I cry a little bit every time I watch this, RIP to all the soldiers who lost their lives".

We must also take into consideration that if Stawski's videos gained generally negative responses from audiences, he would not be continually comissioned by clients to create their videos. To date he has produced over 20, which is an always increasing number. One artist said about him;
"He really pays attention to detail, which was really cool, and it was just very nice to see that amount of attention to detail that he takes. He just kinda set it apart to anything that we've ever done."

Some of his videos have even been noticed enough to be given awards. For instance, in 2009, Matt's video for 'Weightless' by All Time Low picked up the award for Alternative Press' video of the year. And he was also nominated in 2007 for an MVPA award in the computer effects category for his work on Common's music video 'A Dream' from the soundtrack of the motion picture 'Freedom Writers', starring Academy Award winning actress Hilary Swank. On top of this, several of his videos have been top sellers in the iTunes store, meaning that a lot of people wish to view them over and over again.

Below is a compilation of some of his work;

Due to thinking I wouldn't be able to write much about him as he is still reletively unknown compared to the likes of Chris Cunningham and Michel Gondry, I sent him an email asking him questions concerning his directing style/work. Thinking that I wouldn't get a response until after the deadline, I decided to finish this task regardless. After finishing the task, I then recieved a reply back, which I am very grateful for and still want to include. Below is my initial email and Matt's response;

On Mar 3, 2010, at 1:41 AM, Gemma Grayston (stu-262***) wrote:

Hello, I am currently a student at Suffolk New College studying Media Production, and at present, our assignment is looking into Music Videos. One of the criteria for this assignment is to research a contemporary music director, and being a fan of your videos for quite some time, it would be ideal for me to write this report about you and your work. Therefore, if you have a spare moment, any information/quotes you can give to me will be a massive help! In particular these questions:

- During the very early stages of pre-production of a video, how do you go about dealing with each individual client to ensure their specific target audience is met?
- Are there occurring elements you aim to include in each individual video?
- What are your future ambitions? Would you want to continue in specialising in directing Music Videos?

Thank you very much in advance.

Yours sincerely,
Gemma Grayston.

Hey Gemma how goes it!

Thanks for the kind words...I'd be happy to help out for sure!

1.) Basically to deal with target audiences and expectations from bands/labels and clients, there's a sort of give and take process. Obviously with any treatment (proposal for the video idea) I write, it would be ideal to have complete creative control and come up with an off the wall idea, but a lot of times the label has a brief and a guideline of expectations on what to expect in the video, so you sort of have to conform the big picture to satisfy their marketing goals...but at the same time adding your special touch to it. Obviously there's ways to persuade client to go with your idea...sometimes if I'm very passionate about a crazier, more abstract idea, I'll submit loads of visual references and even test footage of an effect I'd like to pull off, to really convince the label to trust me with the idea. I'd say about 50% of my videos I had complete creative control and 50% we had to work with the labels idea and direction because they needed to satisfy this target audience and not confuse or shock anyone.

2.) Yeah I believe there's definitely elements I like to include in all of my videos. I'm still young and still learning, so there's always a personal "one-up" challenge I give myself. For example, if I did a bunch of animated videos recently, I'd strive to shoot some more live action ones. Or if I used a style of animation a couple times, I'll try to add elements or different techniques to this animation. I'd say some of the specifics I like to include are symmetry (not the entire video but there always has to be a balance in a couple shots), swish pan transitions (these really move the video along and sometimes work better than a straight cut because they are pre-planned and can almost be used to go from a character, into their point of view), animations with a puppet like movement, color (is suuuuuper important to me!, although I'm actually color blind which is weird haha!), and a climax as well. Most songs are written in a sort of cinematic manner, where it builds to a stronger final chorus, or climax, so I believe in most of my videos, there has to be something introduced in the end, that justifies the power and emotion in a given song.

-I'd say my future ambitions are feature films, musicals to be specific. I'm enthralled my musicals, they blow me away, and I'd love to be able to have a career making feature length musicals. But for now, I'll continues with music videos! I also have a TV show in the works, a scientific one...so we'll see how that works out!

Thanks so much for reaching out to me Gemma! If you have any other questions I'd be glad to help answer them! Like I said, I'm still young and don't know all of the answers to the world of film...but I can for sure give you my experience and my take on things so far!

Happy Oscar weekend!

Matt.