Director

Sam Brown

It's eleven years since Sam Brown's first video for Adele. Finally, we have his second, and it was worth the wait.It was Brown's iconic video for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYEDA3JcQqw" target="_blank">Rolling In The Deep</a> that kickstarted Adele's ascent to superstardom, of course. Now for Oh My God he has supercharged the elements that made that video a slow-burning masterpiece.[imgtoken data:1]Once again, a performance by Adele - now mature, so much more self-confident - is framed within a series of vignettes that represent the elements of the song. But this time these individual parts of the vision are brought together, all appearing&nbsp;within&nbsp;a single extraordinary camera movement.With the beautifully choreographed flow of characters and objects, the repetition of individuals on screen - primarily&nbsp;Adele herself - Brown has employed motion control camerawork at a level of sophistication and complexity that has been rarely achieved.But if this video is driven by it's concept, it never loses sight of the primary purpose - display the star quality of Adele. This is a stunning, virtuoso combination of&nbsp;artist performance with filmmaking skill and invention.

United Kingdom

Rogue Films

Imperial Woodpecker

Nkem Egbuchiri

Bryan Younce

Polly Ruskin

Roman Vasyanov

Megan Lawson

Nu California

Jamie Mizrahi

Sami Knight

Anthony Nguyen

Natasha Newman-Thomas

Jenni Clark

Sam Ostrove

Cabin Edit

Electric Theatre Collective

Phil Lee

Untold Studios

Alexa Haywood at Free Agent UK

Taylor James

Kimmie Kyees

Adele 'Oh My God' by Sam Brown

Adele - Oh My God (Official Video)

Sam Brown first made his mark as a music video director, with his work for Corinne Bailey Rae, James Blunt, Foo Fighters&nbsp;and many others. Then he became one of the UK&#39;s top commercials directors, and&nbsp;his outings in videos have, not surprisingly, been a lot rarer. In fact, his last one was for <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYEDA3JcQqw" target="_blank">Adele&#39;s Rolling In The Deep</a> nearly three years ago &ndash; which is&nbsp;now probably the most viewed British music video on YouTube of all time (at currently around 420 million views).&nbsp;But now he&#39;s back, with a video for a relatively unknown band, London Grammar, and a video that has all the hallmarks of a labour of love. It features a man who literally turns himself into a human firework display, for the benefit of his beloved daughter.So we&nbsp;talked to Sam Brown to find out what prompted this return to music videos for London Grammar&#39;s Strong,&nbsp;and the genesis of his amazing &#39;firework man&#39; film - and working with &#39;Pyro Boy&#39; until the fireworks bounced off the camera lens...&nbsp;Promo News: This is your first video since Adele&rsquo;s Rolling In The Deep. What lured you back to music videos? How much did you know about London Grammar before you made the video?Sam: I&#39;d heard of them. The record company had approached me about doing the first video, but we couldn&#39;t get the dates to work and they ended up making a very fine one with Bison, which turned out to be one of the best things I&#39;ve seen in a while, so I was sort of glad it&#39;d worked out that way. Anyway, it piqued my interest for the second single because they looked like an interesting band, interested in interesting things.Where did the idea of the firework man come from? Did the song provide the inspiration? Presumably this amazing suit already exists?The idea grew from a line in the song: &#39;if a child cries what would you not give them?&#39;. The video was intended as a simple allegory for parenthood. I was thinking about the way we do everything for our children, selflessly and without question, with the unspoken understanding that one day they&#39;ll do the same for us. So in the story the man looks after the girl, and then right at the very end the girl looks after the man.The guy in the suit is Pyro Boy, an astonishing eccentric called Wally Glenn. It&#39;s been a ten year dream to work with him, but I&#39;d always felt like I wanted to fit him into a story somehow and couldn&#39;t think of the right idea.&nbsp; It&#39;s well known that I&#39;m a pyromaniac. Music videos have pretty much been a way of exploring that obsession. I&#39;m always trying to find ways to explode things.How long did it take to get it together and why did you shoot in LA?We had a couple of weeks prep, and shot it over three evenings. We shot in LA because I was looking for a location that was vaguely apocalyptic. There are great swathes of LA that look like a scorched and ruined planet. Nowhereland. I&#39;d actually shot close to the viaduct on another project, so it was the first place I thought of which is great because I hate location scouting more than anything. Loads of great movies had been filmed down there. It&#39;s a very strange place indeed. Best avoided at night.Was there an element of danger in shooting the man in the suit? How long was it spurting fireworks &ndash; and how many times were you able to shoot it? Presumably your cameraman couldn&rsquo;t get too close&hellip;.?We did a lot of work in adapting his act for the video, compressing what would normally be five minutes worth of fireworks into less than 30 seconds. To the naked eye it was indescribable.It was only really dangerous for Wally. I think he&#39;s been in and out of hospital a few times doing this sort of act. The hairiest thing is when fireworks get trapped between his body and the ground, or one flies down his pants or something.Autumn [Cheyenne Durald] and her crew were fully suited up. Autumn is such an amazing DP. She&#39;s all-action. We started about 30ft away with the camera, but got braver over the seven takes, until the fireworks actually started pinging off the lens. There are a few of these shots in the film. We all got rather blasétowards the end. I sense Wally sneaked a few more fireworks in there too. One shot clean through my legs... I have a vivid recollection of turning to watch it fizz away along the viaduct.The video feels like it could be part of a longer narrative &ndash; was there a backstory about the father and the daughter that you could expand upon?I&#39;m glad it seems like there&#39;s a backstory because the video is meant to feel like a fragment of a much longer narrative, in which they&#39;ve probably done this thing together many times. It&#39;s a practised ritual. Their secret way of speaking to each other.Clearly with something like this you&rsquo;re working within budget limitations that you don&rsquo;t have to deal with making commercials. In what ways is it a different process for you?I&#39;ve learned that there&#39;s never enough money or time no matter what the budget is, whether it&#39;s thousands or millions. The ambition always outstrips the resources, and the basic problems and challenges are the same all the way up.In videos there&#39;s less structure, less money, less refinement. But there&#39;s also less talking, less wastage, and less compromise. You&#39;re free to try things out. People put their trust in you. It&#39;s depressing how quickly good ideas can evaporate when you have to explain or justify it to others. You can lose confidence in something that was really good, just because somebody else doesn&#39;t understand it. What&#39;s great about promos is there&#39;s no idea development, focus groups or pre-production meetings: either a label get your idea or they don&#39;t. Either you do it or you don&#39;t do it. It&#39;s simple.What are you working on now &ndash; and any more music videos in the pipeline?I&#39;m shooting two commercials in tandem with each other, one here and one abroad. I would like to do another video before the end of the year, when I&#39;ve scraped myself off the floor.And out of interest, what of your music videos to date are you most proud of, and think most fondly about now?I&#39;m proud of the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oofSnsGkops" target="_blank">first James Blunt video</a> I did. Not necessarily for the film itself, but how it opened up my film making and for the first time gave me a voice that felt like my own and not someone else&#39;s. It also showed me the value of taking pretty sizeable risks.&bull; Sam is represented by Rogue Films in the UK&nbsp;and by The Director&#39;s Bureau in the US&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Sam Brown: "It's been a ten year dream to work with Pyro Boy"

London Grammar - Strong (Official Video)

Sam Brown marks his return to promo-making - it&#39;s his first since his iconic video for&nbsp;Adele&#39;s Rolling In The Deep - with this beautifully atmospheric promo&nbsp;for Strong by&nbsp;the critically-acclaimed London Grammar.Shot at the 6th Street Viaduct in Los Angeles, the video combines Sam&#39;s love of pyrotechnics set against an emotional tale about a father and his daughter and the &#39;strange and beautiful ritual that connects them together&#39;.

PJ Sodaski

Tom Farley

Charlie Crompton

Sue Yeon Ahn

Autumn Cheyenne Durald

Amanda James

Final Cut

Seamus O'Kane

The Mill

The Director's Bureau

Nash Edgerton

Savannah Young

Pyro Boy

Wally Glenn

OB Management

Ministry of Sound

Caroline Clayton

Indie

Soul

London Grammar 'Strong' by Sam Brown

London Grammar - 'Strong' - Directed by Sam Brown

With nearly 3 million hits on Youtube and one of the most anticipated releases of 2011, Adele&#39;s opening gambit for the forthcoming 21 album campaign, is the earthy Brit-soul of Rolling In The Deep accompanied by an excellent promo by Sam Brown.With all departments turning in great work, this classy well-shot promo has some nice touches throughout, including some Jurassic Park-style water ripples masking the kick drum and a nice bit of slow-mo on the dancer in the white powder, all building in intensity to suit the escalating soundtrack.

Flynn

Hannah Chandler

Natalie Bayle

Jez Oakley

Tom Townend

Gabi Norland

Nathan Parker

Gaelle Paul

Art Jones

Work Editorial

Michael Ashton

XL Recordings

Adele 'Rolling In The Deep' by Sam Brown

UK-Music-Video-Awards-2011-–-all-of-last-night’s-winners!

Sam Brown's next video after his MVA-winning vid for Jay Z's On To The Next One is this striking work for Polydor priority Clare Maguire - spectacular in scale but also intensely focused on building a single idea. Sam's videos are rarer these days, due to his popularity in adland (with the likes of Audi's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watchv=7c9GmwTiuGk" target="_blank">Beauty and the Beasts</a>) but when they happen, he's driven to do something distinctive.

Emma Comley

Robbie Ryan

Julia Knight

Leith Clark

Aubrey Woodiwiss

Clare Maguire’s Ain’t Nobody by Sam Brown

Clare-Maguire’s-Ain’t-Nobody-by-Sam-Brown

Jay-Z's fifth single from The Blueprint 3 brings Sam Brown back to promos - he's now usually occupied making ads - to make a compelling, bold and beautiful take on the hip-hop video.Packed with stunning imagery, and intriguing characters, it's essentially a series of seemingly disconnected portraits and setpieces. And the video has been the subject of a huge amount of web conjecture, based around its apparently references to Freemasonry and the Illuminati.If anything this is Sam making a point of putting some of the dyed-in-the-wool conventions of the hip-hop video aside, and moving on - his take on the theme of the song.It's his best for a long time - with a brilliant edit by Amanda James.Sam Brown on making the video for Jay-Z's On To The Next One"I was very much into things that capture the music but don't exactly relate to each other. I think that's a more interesting way of working. At this stage, I'm not interested in a conventional narrative or doing a straight performance video."The imagery is quite unusual, and people have read things into it. I didn't realize that there have been all these stupid rumours of Jay-Z being in some occult sect. I had no idea."It was the sound itself that got me into the dark stuff. The song has a harsh repetitive sample, the first time I heard it I thought it was like a song going backwards - like the ones that get interpreted as demonic messages. The song sounds so oppressive and that's what I wanted - something dark, oppressive and brutal."The song is about progress, about not getting stuck doing the same thing, and hip-hop can be oddly conservative, with conventions that are very rarely broken. Jay-Z has been more openminded, looking outside hip-hop for inspiration. So the video is really about being a funeral for clichéd rap imagery."You have to destroy one thing in order to create another. Before you can bring in something new. Did Jay-Z get that Well, he gave me the brief, and I showed him a lot of images, but didn't really get to explain my thinking. He really let me get on with it."We shot at Coyote Studios in LA for two days with two cameras. No big sets or complicated lighting. The 4:3 format is a reaction to that as well. The characters don't do much and, like the clown-type guy, have a pent-up brooding presence - again, the track is like that. The fluid seeping into objects is like a whitewashing of things, before you can start again."We did get the car from Jaguar - I'm pretty new to the world of product placement. But it's the fifth video off the album and the budget was relatively tiny. And it was part of it for me: I'm going to get this and I'm going to destroy it."When you get a big opportunity like this, then why not push it a bit And people were receptive. Jay-Z loved the edit, and only really wanted one thing changed. Amanda [James at Final Cut] absolutely killed it. I told her I wanted it to be brutal and she nailed it. I didn't really want anything to happen in it - people don't do much. But what they do, Amanda captured it."

Jeremy Sullivan

Chris Probst

Bouha Kazmi

Paul Wilmitt

David Saslow

Jay-Z’s On To The Next One by Sam Brown

JAY-Z - On To The Next One ft. Swizz Beatz

Watch: <a href="http://www.flynnproductions.com/music/director/sam_brown/1335/full/">here</a>

Sam Brown (director)

Paul Norman

Steve Chivers

Sophie Neudorfer

Nra Kudelka

Foo Fighters’ Wheels by Sam Brown

The Verve are back, with substantial support from Sam Brown.Lots of vignettes, including North Korean dance footage (the best thing going before Beijing) and a fantastically-shot falconry sequence.Which makes up for the fact Richard Ashcroft clearly lost the use of his legs during the course of the shoot.

Sam Brown

Director

Interviews featuring Sam Brown

Videos featuring Sam Brown

2022 (1)

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