I have chosen Keshavarz as my director to study as I enjoy his fast paced, narrative style videos; he manages to convey intricate, interesting stories in his work, in keeping with the music he is working with. He has so far been very understated, as he is still quite young and is relatively just starting out .Most of his work is in the music video field, though he has also dont some work in advertisements, and studied business as university. I think the reason his videos make such an impact is that they throw such a vast amount o f information at the viewer in such a short space of time, in particular, his video for Cinnamon Chasers song Luv Deluxe(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8Y1MalRrDc ), in which a story set over the space of several weeks, even months is compacted into a 3 minute wordless film.

Keshavarz frequently partners with producer Francis Pollara, such as in Luv Deluxe and in Russ Chimes 3 Part video series for the Midnight Club EP. Pollaras work has received slightly more mainstream praise than Keshavarz, as he was also responsible for producing a famous canon camera advertisement in America; although the vast majority of the visual ideas featured in the music videos is that of Keshavarz himself.

What I find particularly captivating about Keshavarz overall work is his general ability to tell such a detailed story with no script, yet leave a lot of the interpretation to the viewer, to read between the lines. This is evident in the user comments on his YouTube videos, where it is obvious that different people has widely varied views of the stories and symbolism that his images set out to portray. This idea is particularly clear in Luv Deluxe, as the video itself features the sub-title Life With a Re-Set Button; when the video is viewed with this outlook, rather than a much more general one, I feel it appears more surreal and dream like, compared to its originally gritty and more hard-hitting moral theme.

Director Study: Saman Keshavarz

By Lydia Cole

In particular, I wanted to focus in Keshavarz work in his 3 part video series for Russ Chimes Midnight Club EP. (Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rTqQnYixTY, Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPhivsFOHo4&feature=related, Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnSUw02aaSA&feature=related) He tells a story, out of chronological order, in a series of short, often repeated clips lasting a total of around fifteen minutes, again still shorter than most films. The story is that of a man whose girlfriend is kidnapped, and his attempts to find her. The music the story is set to is fast paced electronic/dance music, which fits the story so well, as it adds to the sense of danger, fear and the element of a countdown to the kidnap storyline.

Some scenes are repeated throughout the three videos, as all are mostly out of chronological order. Keshavarz does this very cleverly- for a music accompaniment, there videos are so well thought out, their attention to detail is amazing. The below screenshot is featured in the second video, it shows all the sections of the story, out of chronological order, as a summary for the viewer, to keep them in the picture. Due to its ambiguity however, the fact that it appears when so much is still so mysterious, it still no doubt further confuses them.

Synaesthesia: is a neurologically based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway; I'm sure each person that watches this trilogy can attest to the sensations they experience, this comes from the repetition of several scenes thrown over and over in the viewers face, sometimes in order, sometimes not, at varied lengths as well. The viewer is confused, but at the same time they are exposed to ever-growing amounts of sense. Keshavarz does this intentionally so as to create great intrigue, in all his videos, which is why they are so great to watch, especially this series.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3Luv Deluxe:Midnight Club:Here you can see the YouTube views, likes and dislikes Keshavarz videos have received. What I instantly notice and find strange is that the second video has less views than the third- people are watching the third video without having seen the second, which would surely render the entire production nonsensical, I can only assume that the people that have done this have done so just to listen to the songs themselves instead of watching the videos. (These people do not know what they have missed out on). In terms of likes and dislikes, it can be clearly observed tan Keshavarz videos receive many more likes than dislikes overall, though it is still clear from this that both the first and third videos are more popular than the second. The comments on the videos all seem to be in Keshavarz favour:Luv Deluxe is by far Keshavarz more popular video, probably due to Cinnamon Chasers, the artist behind the song, being more famous than the artist behind Midnight Club. It does however , mean that more people have taken notice of Keshavarz directorial skills, not only has the video received over 20,000 likes (admittedly this could be due to the song, and it has also received over 200 dislikes) , but the majority of the user comments are about the video, not the song: