Industry News - Samuel Bayer

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Art v Commerce

Celebrated film, video and commercial director Samuel Bayer, discusses the difference between fine art and commercial art as he gives us an inside glimpse of his recent solo exhibition at ACE Gallery in Beverly Hills. Samuel exposes ideas, secrets and experiences about his time directing music videos, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana and “Zombie” by the Cranberries, as well as the fortuitous situation that lead him to this extraordinary crossover into the contemporary art world. Featuring the art of Samuel Bayer Directed, edited & scored by Jesse Meeker

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Samuel Bayer’s American Image

“I always used to say that, maybe I didn’t become successful as a painter, but my images were seen by lots and lots of people,” muses filmmaker Samuel Bayer over the phone. He is not exaggerating. Between his music videos for Justin Timberlake, The Rolling Stones, Green Day and The Strokes, and his Super Bowl commercials for Chrysler and Budweiser, most Americans are familiar with Bayer’s art, whether they realize it or not.   Trained as a painter, Bayer stormed onto MTV in the early 1990s. His first music video was [...]

Samuel Bayer

Director Samuel Bayer Debuts Photography Exhibition at L.A. Gallery

Known for his music videos for the Strokes, Green Day and Nirvana, Bayer has penetrated the fine art world with “Diptychs & Triptychs,” on view at ACE Gallery in Beverly Hills through April 27. Walk into Samuel Bayer’s solo exhibition at Beverly Hills’ ACE Gallery and you’ll find yourself surrounded. Sixteen women, each 12 feet tall and entirely confident despite their stark nudity, stare quietly from the four walls of the gallery’s main room. The initial effect is overwhelming, and as Bayer admits, “almost a little bit spooky.” Yet this is [...]

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Samuel Bayer Diptychs & Triptychs

EXHIBTION ON VIEW FROM MARCH 3, 2013 THROUGH APRIL 27, 2013 Depicting the human body has been among the primary preoccupations and achievements of artists for millennia. Drawing inspiration from historic precedents in painting, sculpture, photography and film history, for the past twenty years Samuel Bayer has produced still photographs alongside his innumerable award-winning music videos, film and commercials. Bayer has evolved an aesthetic of gritty rawness, a now emblematic style that has typified his music videos since his groundbreaking first with Nirvana in 1991. The culmination of his recent [...]

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Stevie Wonder/ Bud Light Squeaks Past Jimmy Cliff/ Volkswagen for Most-Tweeted Super Bowl Ad: Brand Bowl

By Andrew Hampp, New York | February 04, 2013 12:23 AM EST Not surprisingly, Beyonce was the most-Tweeted artist of Super Bowl 47 by a mile. But the race for most-Tweeted music-related commercial was very close – with Bud Light’s Stevie Wonder-starring ad slipping past Volkswagen and Jimmy Cliff by less than 100 Tweets, as of the 11 p.m. ET cutoff time. Check out all of the music-based ads from the big game right here. Brand Bowl’s 10 Most Tweeted Commercials 1. Bud [...]

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Samuel Bayer: From Nirvana to ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’

The director, a veteran of memorable music videos and commercials, makes his feature debut with a reboot of the Freddy Krueger slasher flick. ‘This was “Twilight” before “Twilight.” No matter how fierce your devotion to popular culture, odds are you’ve never heard of Samuel Bayer, who makes his feature directing debut Friday with the reboot of “A Nightmare on Elm Street.” But you’re almost certainly familiar with his work. A prolific commercial and music-video director, Bayer has been responsible for some of the most memorable images of the last 20 [...]

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Five History-Making MTV Music Videos — New York Magazine

Nirvana“Smells Like Teen Spirit” (1991) Seattle punks start a revolt, and snuff hair metal. Robin Sloane, Geffen Records Exec: Kurt Cobain was the only artist I’ve ever known who had brilliant, fully realized ideas he could express in one sentence. With “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Kurt said, “My idea for the video is a pep rally gone wrong.” He looked at director Sam Bayer’s reel and loved it, so I hired Sam. But there were a lot of problems between Sam and Kurt. Courtney Love: Kurt hated Sam Bayer. For “Teen Spirit,” Kurt [...]

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Rolling Stone Readers Pick the Best Music Videos of All Time

3. Nirvana, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ (1991) Samuel Bayer’s music video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was just as radical and widely imitated as Nirvana‘s song itself. The clip pretty much invented the visual lexicon of grunge, with a bunch of dudes in ratty clothing wilding out at what appears to be a pep rally for a high school full of burnouts and gutter punks. After years of glossy pretty-boy rockers and video vixens, Bayer and Nirvana came out of nowhere to give a brand-new look to mainstream rock music. Read [...]

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Maroon 5′s ‘Payphone’ Video Features Bank Robbery, Car Chases and Explosions (Video)

Don’t try this at home, kids. Maroon 5’s new music video for “Payphone” features frontman Adam Levine escaping a bank robbery, dodging bullets, stealing a car and running from police. “Payphone” is the lead single from Maroon 5’s upcoming album Overexposed, set for release on June 26th via A&M/Octone! Directed by Samuel Bayer, the clip starts out with Levine standing by an exploding car. Then, Levine is shown sitting in a bank that is soon robbed. We then get to see how he ended up standing next to that exploding car. Although it’s fun to [...]

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Spot On

Since 1984, commercials have been as much a part of the Super Bowl as the football game itself and sometimes better. But few of the millions of viewers realize that behind all the great ads are directors doing their most creative work. If there is one place a commercial director wants to be on Super Bowl Sunday, it’s in the game. After all, the Super Bowl is the premier showcase for commercials with a staggering number of Americans watching the National Football League’s championship showdown. Last year’s Super Bowl XLV [...]

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Chrysler’s ‘Born of Fire’ Wins Emmy for Best Commercial Third straight W+K spot to win

Wieden + Kennedy has picked up its third straight Emmy Award for Outstanding Commercial—this time for Chrysler’s “Born of Fire” Super Bowl spot starring Eminem. The two-minute spot was directed by Samuel Bayer of Serial Pictures and edited by Tommy Harden of Joint Editorial. The ad beat out five other nominees—which you can see after the jump. (Somewhat controversially, the list didn’t include Volkswagen’s “The Force,” from Deutsch, which was arguably the best-loved spot from the Super Bowl.) Olivier Francois, CMO at Chrysler Group, said in a statement: ” ‘Born [...]

A Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy’s Not Dead Yet

A Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy’s Not Dead Yet

Hunky, drowsy, brain-scrambled Dean (Kellan Lutz) walks, or sleepwalks, through the Springwood, Ohio, diner. And finds Freddy Krueger (Jackie Earle Haley), the razor-fingered dream stalker. Back in his booth, Dean seems to be struggling with himself, then takes a knife and slits his own throat, deep and deadly. The title card A Nightmare on Elm Street snaps onto the screen, and the audience at last night’s Times Square press screening erupts in a gleeful cheer. Or maybe that was from the Dolby, because much of the postscreening chatter — at [...]

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Eminem’s Chrysler Super Bowl ad: Behind the Scenes of One of Sunday’s Best Commercials

Chrysler’s “Imported From Detroit” ad has been called one of the best commercials of Super Bowl XLV. “It’s not like we set out to do a two-minute commercial with Eminem,” Melissa Garlick, head of Chrysler advertising, tells EW. He was originally approached just about using “Lose Yourself” in the ad because it’s a great comeback anthem. The more Chrysler management, including CEO Sergio Marchionne, spoke with him, the more they realized they shared the same passion for the city, and he agreed to be in the commercial. “We weren’t looking [...]

Samuel Bayer

Interview: Samuel Bayer, Director of ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’

I’ll be honest and say that when I first heard a music video director would be doing a remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, one of the most beloved horror franchises of all time, I wasn’t too crazy about the idea. Sure, we’ve seen brilliant music video directors such as Fincher and Jonze go on to have very successful film careers, but just as often, we get overstylized filmmaking with no sense of how to make a 90-minute film cohere as a whole. Then I read up a little [...]

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Getting from MTV to the Big Screen

For over a decade, the roster of elite indie filmmakers has been filled with draftees from the playing fields of music video. Spike Jonze (“Adaptation’’), Michel Gondry (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’’), Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (“Little Miss Sunshine’’), and others have catapulted from MTV to indie-film success via a canny manipulation of what they learned in the music-video trenches: slick production values, an eye for catchy stories, and an understanding of the cultural zeitgeist. Now a second wave of music-video-bred filmmakers is bypassing the hipster-art-house milieu. They’re [...]