Low Budget Audio-visual Aesthetics in Indie Music Video and Feature Filmmaking: The Works of Steve Hanft and Danny Perez

In this chapter I explore the interactions between music videos and feature films within the category of low-budget indie productions. I do so through the lens of authorship and focus on two particular directors who have moved between music video and feature film direction: Steve Hanft and Danny Perez. My focus on these directors aims to broaden the general points made about the music video’s influence on indie feature filmmaking which have, up until now, largely explored more commercially-oriented and higher budgeted feature films.

In this chapter I extend this authorial focus beyond the more commercial, privileged examples, who tend to operate within the “Indiewood” sphere, where Hollywood studio production merges with elements more associated with independent production (King 2009). Indie is, however, a broad category that also includes lower-budgeted, underground productions, and this is the area of indie production that I will explore through these two authorial case studies.