Jonas Åkerlund is a Swedish film and music video director. He is best known for directing music videos, which are often mock forms of movie trailers and short films. He directed Candlemass' first video, Bewitched.
He became famous when directing videos for Roxette. He also directed Smack my Bitch Up from the Prodigy. He has also worked with Madonna, Christina Aguilera, U2, Blink-182, Metallica, P!ink, Britney Spears, Ramstein and Lady Gaga.
What I most like about Akerlund's work is when he makes a short film for a music video, like he does in Telephone and Paparazzi (Lady Gaga). I think he makes his videos look interesting and entertaining, and tries to put a bit of action in to his work.
I like the lighting of this video, especially at the beginning when the light is coming from behind and we can see the silhouettes of people doing a choreography. The video itself is all quite dark, but when there is red in a scene it is always very intense. It is all very sexual in an obscure way, although at the beginning we can see the video is about a funeral, so this makes it even weirder. There are a few close-ups but mostly we see master shots where everything is in the screen so we can see things like the choreography.
The main colors of this video are red, green and yellow. There is a lot of variety of camera angles, close-ups, medium close-ups, etc. The editing is quite quick, and i think it is based on a collage type of editing, because it is obviously all fake. It reminds me a bit of Pop Art, but I like the way it all looks so surreal. it uses quite a few things you would see in a comic like the use of onomatopoeia.
This video is very original, as it uses dolls instead of people. The lighting is very dull, and its looks very unprofessional but it is still a good video, it is something unexpected. It is like a make-up of reality, using all types of toys and little objects to represent reality. I think they should have tried using some special effects instead of making it look so home made.
