Dawn Shadforth

After looking at some of Dawn Shadforth’s works in class, I went ahead and viewed some of her other music videos over the years just to get a broader idea of what sort of director she is. I found it difficult to pinpoint the type of style or genre she directed in as all her music videos were so distinct from each other. There’s satirical playfulness in Peach’s Kick It, moody reflectiveness in Selena Gomez’s The Heart Wants What It Wants, ethereal jubilance in Florence + The Machine’s Shake It out; so many colours, styles and moods that I figured the aspect that connects all her works together is Shadforth’s ability to reflect on the artist’s personal style and mood of their music.

Reading David Knight’s interview with Shadforth gave me a really good insight into her mind as a director. She clearly expresses a sensitivity to the music and the need for collaboration with the artists which I think is essential to filmmaking.

“My impulse was to do something that had some honesty and emotionally matched the lyrics and the narrative came from my interpretation of them.”

In a sense, I see that Shadforth brings an artist’s music to life in her music videos, which makes it no surprise that she’s such a famous and well known music video director. Aspiring to be a director myself, reading this interview and seeing how she approaches production and collaborations gave me a good idea as to what standard I should be aiming for with not only making Bloom’s music video, but any future productions.