Chris Cunningham

Cunningham is a British music video director, who has directed many music videos with big artists. Names include Madonna, Bjonk and Aphex Twin. (He works with Aphex Twins a lot.)

 

He tends to stick with working with electronic and techno musical genres; post-modern, if you will. His music videos often involve a lack of colour, or none at all. If he does work with colour, he will tend to use cold colours, to not only give the music video an uncomfortable feel, but to create a deeper meaning. Sometimes, these deeper meanings could cause controversy. Other times, the will shock the viewer, making the music video, and the song, more memorable. 

Cunningham's videos often focus on narrative, and not so much performance. The music video and lyrics will, more often than not, have be unconnected, but in some cases, the unrelated music video may enhance the sales of the track, due to the hard hitting message that it contains (or, like we said before, the controversy or the 'shock-factor'). A fine example of his work is  Aphex Twin's "Come to Daddy". This music video received a varied response- it was instantly praised, banned, and raved about by many people in the music industry.

FUN FACT: Cunningham edits most of his own work!

The video opens with an old woman walking a dog in a industrial, grim location. The dog urinates on an abandoned television lying on the pavement. This causes it to sputter unexpectedly into life, which unleashes an evil spirit, accompanied by a gang of small children, all of whom bear James' grinning face. The children go around creating havoc- they trash an alleyway and chase a man into his car. The demon emerges from the television, screams in the woman's face, and then gathers the children around him.
It is the only music video in the top 50 of The 100 Greatest Scary Moments as voted by Channel 4 viewers in 2003.