Hype Williams

Harold 'Hype' Williams was born in 1970, Queens New York. Hype Williams is a well known auteur who has an amazing history of artists that he has worked with, such as Kanye West, B.I.G, Beyonce, Jay-Z and Alicia Keys. Hype’s creative vision and signature style that is spread across each one of his music video’s is what lead him to the top, being one of the current most well known auteurs. This creative vision and spin to his work became visible through the contrasting colours he uses, the abstract transitions and the actors and actresses he uses. Hype works specifically in the Hip-Hop and R’n’B genre’s. He is well known for the trend of attractive, good looking and physically fit actors and actresses that appear in his video’s. Furthermore, Hype often uses many contrasting colours bringing a lot more energy and atmosphere to the music video’s he produces, also, adding to his unique style Hype uses a wide range of transitions, adding effects into each, which many producers will not risk doing, this brings a lot of attention towards the screen and to what is happening within the video. These are just a few examples of the way Hype uses his extraordinary unique and recognisable style to draw in an audience. Hype is a music video and film director descended from African American background. His slang name, Hype, comes from his over-hyperactivity as a child. His passion for Graffiti is what first brought across his interest in colour and art which can be seen in his creative music videos. He has received many awards in the past for his creativity and style within his work, such as ‘Best director of the year’ and ‘Best group video’.

A signature style used by Hype Williams involved placing shots in regular widescreen ratio, while a second shot is split and placed in the upper and lower bars. Videos that use this style include "Diamonds on my Neck" by Smitty, "I Ain't Heard of That" by Slim Thug, "So Sick" by Ne-Yo, "In My Hood" by Young Jeezy, and many others.

Another signature style used by Williams throughout the vast majority of his videos was the Fisheye lens which distorted the camera view around the central focus. This was used in video’s such as "Gimme Some More" by Busta Rhymes and "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)" by Missy Elliott.

Since 2003, Williams has adopted a signature style combining a center camera focus on the artist or actor's body from the torso upward and a solid color background with a soft different-color light being shown in the center of the background, so as to give a sense of illumination of the background by the foreground subject. This has been displayed in "Gold Digger" by Kanye West, and Beyonce’s ‘Video phone’