Hiro Murai

MUSIC VIDEO DIRECTOR

Hiro Murai - Distinctive style All music video directors have their own distinctive style and Hiro Murai is no exception as he always manages to put a unique twist on all his pieces of work. Hiro’s unique twist is that he incorporates a wide variety of special effects in his video and a lot of the time there is some sort of supernatural feature involved. For example in the videos ‘Queens of the Stone Age - Smooth Sailing’ and ‘Childish Gambino - Telegraph Ave’, hero shows off his supernatural twist. In ‘Smooth Sailing’ the video is based around a group of men on a night out drinking and taking various different pills and this leads to them having hallucinations so Hiro cleverly showed them seeing other people as these zombie type monsters due to their extreme amount of drugs and drinking. In ‘Telegraph Ave’ the video is focused around the artist Childish Gambino and at first it seems he is just on an exotic holiday with his girlfriend however towards the end of the video, Hiro decided this is not his typical style and throws in a supernatural twist and turns Childish Gambino into this murderous monster. Hiro Murai also always loves to finish his music videos in a shocking way to possibly surprise the viewer and counter the usual happy ending associated with the stereotypes, like in ‘Smooth Sailing’ it ends by showing the men who were parting, burying the men they killed.

Hiro Murai – Where his ideas come from

I found this on ‘Billboard’ whilst researching into Hiro Murai. The 31-year-old music video director, is trying to explain how his imagination works. "I'll listen to a song so much that ideas start to form out of daydreaming. It's as if I'm reverse-scoring the track and building visuals around a specific beat or riff that's grabbed me," he says, releasing a self-deprecating laugh. "Was that the most abstract nonsense you've ever heard?"

Hiro Murai – More recent workDavid Guetta Ft. Sia 'She Wolf‘: Shot in Iceland for that early winter feeling, Hiro Murai's promo for David Guetta's She Wolf is a very natural affair with a naked woman, a bunch of scary hunters and a pack of wolves roaming the beautiful but desolate landscape.

Then the chorus hits and all digital hell breaks loose with some cool explosions, eruptions and general mayhem punctuating the action to very dramatic effect.

Gym Class Heroes feat. Adam Levine 'Stereo Hearts‘: This is not Hiro’s usual style as he normally goes for very extreme effects, however he puts a clever unique twist on the video by using some minor effects and contrasting past with present.

Gym Class Heroes drummer Matt McGinley explained that the song's music video "basically plays on the idea that we're sort of just being casual, hanging out, being ourselves and our shadows get wild and get loose. The video shows the band playing in the city of New York and their shadows are playing on the ground."

The video has the feel of a 1980s setting, with a breakdance and several payphones seen, though the actual setting is modern as evidenced by the Mini Cooper in one scene. It prominently features a pawn shop with a stack of old-fashioned boom boxes and TV sets, on which Adam Levine appears when he is singing the chorus.