This book goes deep on cult music videos and iconic ads

We live in an age of extremes, at least where filmmaking is concerned. The most popular movies on the big screen run an average of two hours and 23 minutes, while many stretch over the three hour mark. At the other end of the scale, the short form filmmaking that fills up our phone screens comes in snippets and bursts, often no more than a few seconds long. In advertising, says writer and editor Claire Marie Healy, this is known as the “gold standard” – the ability to tell a complete story in 30 seconds or less.

In a new book titled Short Form: 40 Years of Music Videos, Ads, and the Art of Moving Images, Healy highlights some of the most successful examples of this concise brand of storytelling, which have undeniably influenced the snappy filmmaking of today, via the 40-year-old British production company Academy Films. From ads to music videos, the tome includes stills, behind-the-scenes images, storyboards, script notes, and ephemera that document this golden age of short form filmmaking and the people who emerged as its pioneers.

One of those figures is Jonathan Glazer, who provides the foreword for Short Form, with additional texts from influential voices in screen culture including Charlie Fox, Shaad D’Souza, Adam Nayman, Philippa Snow, and Durga Chew-Bose. Before directing feature films like The Zone of Interest, the filmmaker directed campaigns for the likes of Guinness and Stella Artois, while his music video credits include collaborations with Massive Attack, Radiohead, and Blur. In the book, we get a glimpse into the making of some of these videos, alongside pivotal visuals for Lauryn Hill, The Verve, FKA twigs, and more.

Below, Claire Marie Healy tells us more about Short Form: 40 Years of Music Videos, Ads, and the Art of Moving Images.

What’s special about Academy Films, when it comes to short form filmmaking?

Claire Marie Healy: What’s special about Academy Films is its history of directors, and the boundary-pushing work they’ve made – Jon Glazer, of course, Walter Stern, and a newer generation coming through – but also that, historically, its combination of music video and commercial production under one roof created this great creative symbiosis from the 90s onwards. It has been a really nurturing home for many, many directors, and pushed what’s possible within these forms. 

The way the book developed was to use the epic back catalogue of this iconic production company to tell a story about the artistry of commercial short filmmaking. The idea isn’t to be nostalgic, but to use these techniques of storytelling to inspire the next generation. 

What was the process of selecting the materials included in the book? Was there anything specific you were looking for?

Claire Marie Healy: Really, I wanted to start with a through-line of the kind of critical inquiry that the book could make, and the story it could tell through the impressive visuals and ephemera of these projects. The possibilities were vast – you need only look at the full ‘job list’ at the back of the book to get a sense of the number of productions over 40 years. 

At one point, we began with, ‘Here are all the most memorable music videos, here are all the most iconic or influential commercials,’ splitting the book in two in that way. But it didn’t feel true to the sheer energy of these projects – it was totally flat. So I found five themes that each answered the question of: how do you truly move the viewer in films that are between 30 seconds and three minutes? For me, these approaches, linking the commercials and music videos, could be split into ‘epic’, ‘minimal’, ‘sentiment’, ‘surreal’, and ‘movement’. And we went from there.

Are there any formative music videos (or even ads) that you can remember watching in your own life?

Claire Marie Healy: I grew up in an Irish household, so well before I knew who Jon Glazer was, my Dad would talk about the Guinness Surfer ad as the greatest advert of all time. The history of that brand is so interesting in terms of advertising. And anyone at Academy knows I have a soft spot for the Jean de Florette-spoof Glazer ad for Stella, Last Orders, with Denis Lavant... and that I like to say ‘Stella Artois, S’il vous plait’ in the old man’s French accent sometimes. 

For music, we have Corin Hardy’s spooky hand-drawn video for The Horrors’ ‘She is the New Thing’ in the book, which was a very formative one for me as an indie Essex girl, and has a hilarious story behind it.

What did you learn from seeing other thinkers reflect on the work, via the texts included in the book?

Claire Marie Healy: I was really keen to work with writers who think about film in a wider sense, and could apply their critical thought to the adverts and music videos here. One of my favourite chapters, but also something trickier, was on ‘sentiment’, centred on the Cadbury advert with the little girl and the shopkeeper, Mum’s Birthday. Durga Chew-Bose wrote a beautiful piece tying together her own reflections on motherhood and the story Frederic Planchon tells about family here. 

I’m also very grateful to Adam Nayman for his expertise in drawing out the history in the 1960s onwards of British directors in advertising, like Ridley Scott and Adrian Lyne, and the very generative exchange with Hollywood. It’s a history that allows someone like Jon Glazer to happen, and I had little idea of it before.

What do you think has changed most about short form filmmaking over the last 40 years?

Claire Marie Healy: Big question! I think one aspect that becomes clear [in the book] is that music videos and even advertising were an arena for creativity in a different way, in the 90s through to the 2000s – bigger budgets, sure, but also risk-taking and nurturing commissioners at record labels, and creative directors at advertising agencies, who would really trust the often strange ideas of people like Jonathan Glazer, Martin de Thurah, or Walter Stern to create brilliance. However, there are now new tools that are undeniably breaking open the field: a newer generation coming through, like Nadia Lee Cohen or Iris Luz. We wanted the book to propose a really under-discussed history and heritage to our current moment of online short film.

Are there any clear currents that run throughout the last four decades?

Claire Marie Healy: A clear current for me goes back to those themes that form the structure of the book – there are lessons and approaches that repeat and re-iterate through time. A sense of the dreamlike on an epic scale, or, specifically in advertising, stories of family that remind everyone of their own memory bank. Even just the power of a ‘what the hell was that?’ moment, from The Prodigy to FKA Twigs (as Philippa Snow writes about in her essay ‘Pressing on a Bruise’) is somewhat eternal. It was really fascinating to look at these connections through time that kind of defy trends.

How do you think short form filmmaking speaks to the wider culture? What do you think it can communicate that other art forms maybe can’t?

Claire Marie Healy: In terms of cultural impact, I find this idea of looping and rewatching music videos or even ads interesting, in connection to how we view films on TikTok or Reels and so on now. These are very short clips, and there’s this sense of replay, and re-viewing, that I think has been in rhythm with our daily lives for a very long time. I also think by studying the storyboards, scripts, and really every decision that goes into these short form films – as the book tries to do – a creative of any kind, not just filmmakers, can learn lessons about brevity, directness and the power of a singular image, or a single idea. Making this book really made me think: less is so much more.