Projections of Image on Sound

Abstract

Abstract It has often been claimed that music video has exerted an aesthetic influence on cinema. This chapter establishes some of the common arguments surrounding this claim while simultaneously maintaining certain reservations as to the very legitimacy of tracing such influences. Focusing on three particular points of cross-fertilization between music video and cinema—narrative, musicalization, and “reduced images”—the chapter approaches the relation between music video and cinema from both sides: from music video into cinema and vice versa. More specifically, it analyses the work of two transmedia directors who have had opposite career trajectories: Michel Gondry (who started as a musician, then became a music video director, and finally a film director) and David Lynch (a film director who turned to making music videos, and then to creating music under his own name).