Music Video Director - Joseph Kahn

Ahn Jun-hee, known professionally as Joseph Kahn, is a Korean American film and music video director. Director Joseph Kahn spent part of his childhood in Pusan, South Korea and Livorno, Italy until his family moved to Houston, Texas. He began his directing career in his teens, shooting music videos for local musicians. He eventually enrolled at NYU where after a year and a half into film school, he dropped out to direct.

Within two years Kahn executed dozens of low budget videos where he served as his own cinematographer, editor, and production designer. Moving to Los Angeles in 1995, he first signed at Visages Films, a boutique agency that repped photographers and fashion stylists including the late Herb Ritts.


Kahn became highly sought, working with hundreds of artists such as: U2, Katy Perry, The Chemical Brothers, Lady Gaga, Gwen Stefani, Blink 182, Eminem, Wu-Tang Clan, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, Aerosmith, Faith Hill, Moby, Jamiroquai, Justin Timberlake, George Michael, Kelly Clarkson, Janet Jackson, Black Eyed Peas, Beyonce, and many more. Today he is credited with launching and expanding the careers of many of his artists, and has collected multiple Music Video Production awards.  He has won several MTV Music Video Awards with nominations for best video for Brandy & Monica “The Boy is Mine”, and Britney Spears “Toxic.”  He won his first Grammy for Eminem’s “Without Me” video which also won the MTV VMA’s Best Video of the Year, as well as Best Director. His video for Muse “Knights of Cydonia” won the Los Angeles Film Festival Audience Award. Katy Perry’s “Waking Up in Vegas” won the MVPA Video of the Year.


Some of my favourite music videos that Joseph Kahn has directed include Taylor Swift's, both 'Blank Space' and 'Wildest Dreams'.

The most famous CD covers and music videos!

Hi Guys! I've been doing some research into the most famous CD covers and music videos from the past 50 years or so! This was such an interesting task for me to do and I also found it so surprising; some of the CD covers and music videos I had never come across before until now and it was super interesting finding out the background of some artists. ENJOY.

Controversy Article

Hello lovely bloggers, I wanted to talk about controversy today, in-particular controversy within music videos and the medias views on this subject. I'm basing this blog posts on this articles about Rihanna's song/music video 'Bitch better have my money'; in the seven minute clip. the pop star kidnaps and torments the wife of an accountant for bilked her, dismembers the accountant and then lounges, naked, covered in blood, in a box of money.

There are many different views on this video, the first one being that this is a so called 'phase' that all artists go through at some point in their career following a period where they lose publicity. This suggests Rihanna's aim is to be controversial as an act of attention seeking. Although Rihanna may have a lot of young viewers which is why there was so much up roar about the pornography, violence and racial hatred, there's no denying that airing a video like this which constitutes bad behaviour gets people to talk about her. Being sexy and violent does the same. She did not make this video to make the world a better place; she did it to project an image and get paid and judging by the response, she succeeded on both counts.

The article states that 'when a musician starts to use the phrase 'mini-movie' to describe a video, its time to quit'. This creates disputes as some may argue the artist has put more of their own money into creating a better music video which offers meaning and a story line. However, when it comes to Rihanna's 'Bitch better have my money' mini movie, a lot of viewers said 'Without the video, it wouldn't have succeeded as much' which then brings us back to the first point of the artists using a controversial mini movie to gain publicity.

Overall, I think whether the artist is attention seeking or not, if they deem their video controversial and state it includes explicit content, the audience can't get angry with the music to a certain extent. However, if they still create a scene about the music, they are actually helping towards the artists aim of creating a reaction and helping gain publicity so either way the artist will still be winning.

Pop Genre!

Hi guys, for today's blog post I wanted to go into more depth about genres of music videos so, I decided to choose on specific genre which is very popular in today's music industry (you can't turn on the radio without hearing songs out of this category) to go into detail about including, the background and history of the genre, how it has developed through hybridisation and the sub genres created because of this. This research is beneficial for myself and my group as we are at the stage of deciding our song for our music video; We are focused around the pop/indie genre as this is an area where we have more knowledge and this research will give me influence and ideas on what conventions of pop, I may or may not want to include in my own music video.

Pop music genre blog from savsalt2404

Genre theories

We Media & Democracy

Summer is over.. It's time to get back to work!
In the first few lessons back we have been learning about 'We Media and Democracy' and I wanted to summarise what I have learnt on here!


We media puts forward the theory that the media is becoming more democratic; Dan Gilmor backs up this with his own theory from the book 'We the Media' (2004). He argues that we no longer have to get the news from 'Big Media' and that is allowing for a wider range of voices and perspectives to be heard which will make the media more democratic and representative of people.


'Big Media' includes big organisations such as BBC, Google, Daily Mail etc. The actual definition is "the main means of mass communication, i.e. television, radio and the press, as opposed to blogs or personal websites".Murdoch owns 3 major organisations including Sky, The Sun, The Times and Press Association. These agencies are where the majority of news content comes from. Then newspapers, websites and TV stations often will re-report this news to their audience whilst putting their own slant on it. Metro Newspaper is a good example of an organisation which mainly uses agencies which allows them to give it away for free.


Many problems are created within 'Big Media' for example, the owners are able to add their own opinion when reporting the news to their media which may be biased. E.g. Murdoch makes no attempt to hide his political views and analysing the news from the organisation you will often find many of these views present. BBC does not have these problems because, it is funded by the taxpayer and has strict rules about giving both sides of the story; they have to try to be impartial.


These are just brief explanations about the basics of what I have learn in 'We Media and Democracy' and I will make more blog posts in the near future about what else I learn in my theory lessons.


Thanks for stopping by!