Music Video Director Profile: Rémy Cayuela

Rémy Cayuela

Rémy Cayuela is a French director based in Paris, though he has representatives based around the world in countries like the UK, the US and Switzerland. He directs short films, commercials and music videos. His music videos are focused more on narrative than post-production editing (though it is included). What is most engaging about them is the mise-en-scene and the locations that add to the story.

WAT - Kill Kill

His music video narratives are recognisable through their quirky humour and sometimes shocking and thought-provoking storylines. An example of the latter would be his video for 'Kill Kill' by WAT. This was also his debut in music video direction.

Tensnake - Feel The Love

He has directed a total of 8 music videos since 'Kill Kill' in 2011. He has also directed 4 short films and 8 commercials. Many of these have a running theme of humour including these two, which are unusual and unpredictably funny.

Naive New Beaters - Jersey

I like Rémy Cayuela's music videos because they feel like films, in terms of the way that they are filmed (the frame positioning, the camera movement etc.) and the way that he tells the story. In his video for Dinosaur Pile-Up's song 'Derail', he even includes a section inspired by the film 'Psycho', and it also has kind of a circular narrative.

Dinosaur Pile-Up - Derail

His rising success as a music video director has allowed him to work with big names in the music world, like Duke Dumont on his song 'I Got You'. 

Duke Dumont - I Got You

The video that first caught my attention and how I found out about Rémy Cayuela in the first place was his video for Wilkinson's 'Afterglow'. I liked the song but what I liked most was the video because its such an original idea that it draws you in. The video tells the story of a couple and reminisces of all the time that they've spent together (which has been done before) but it tells their story in numbers, for instance, the number of calls they've made to each other, the number of wine bottles they've gotten through... which is a concept that no ones done before. Cayuela's video even did so well, he won the 1st prize Young Directors Award at the Cannes Festival 2014 for it.

Wilkinson - Afterglow