Music Video Directors
Aerosmith - Falling In Love - Directed by Micheal Bay
Micheal Bay is a famous director, or more accurately infamous given his reputation for creating bad movies more focused on explosions rather than anything else. However, this music video from almost 10 years ago displays more conventional aspects of directing. In this music video, Bay is barely recognisable as the director, unlike in his work today which are immediately characterised by it's excessive use of explosions.
Rihanna - Pour It Up - Directed by Vincent Thaycock
Pour it up fits in comfortably with Rihanna's many other projects and videos involving over sexualizing herself and many other unnamed extras, such as Work and S&M. The director in question, Vincent Thaycock, has similarly displayed highly sexualized themes such as Florence and the Machine's ST Jude, yet has been known to reject any claim to this in particular music video.
I think I'd choose to forgo implementing such techniques in my own work.
Lady Gaga - Marry the Night - Directed by herself
A unique selling point to Lady Gaga and her music is the wonderful and weird personality and persona she constantly displays throughout her career. Therefore, a music video directed entirely by herself makes for certain that the fans will get exactly what they ask for. Lady Gaga has directed a handful of her music videos as well as Marry the Night but this one is particularly popular with her fans as it tells a sort of story about Lady Gaga herself. The accuracy of the video is up to interpretation, as in the first minute of the video, a monologue plays read by Gaga saying "When I look back on my life, it’s not that I don’t want to see things exactly as they happened, it’s just that I prefer to remember them in an artistic way."
The most common interpretation of this is that the events unfolding within the video are a representation of the thoughts and feelings Gaga might have been feeling during and before her rise to fame.
This may actually influence my own work. The amount of personal meaning within my work and holding a deeper message someone could take away is one of the attractions of directing for me personally.