The Work That Made Me: Art Jones
After serving an editorial apprenticeship for nearly five years, Art Jones went freelance to focus purely on music videos. He was nominated for the UK Music Video Awards' Best Editor 2001 then won it consecutively in 2002 and 2003.
He went on to work with some of the leading directors and the world’s best artists including Bjørk, Coldplay, Blur, Jane’s Addiction, Muse, Kylie Minogue and Basement Jaxx. He was awarded the highest accolade in music videos in 2011 winning the best editing category of the MTV Music Video Awards for his work on Adele’s phenomenal ‘Rolling in The Deep.’
He joined the illustrious edit house Work Editorial in 2009 as director and junior partner with founders Jane Dilworth, Rich Orrick, Bill Smedley and Neil Smith. Over the last twenty years he has cut several award-winning and BAFTA nominated short films and also worked with a host of top features directors including Michael Winterbottom, Stephen Frears, John Hilcoat and Johan Renck.
He has recently completed the final two episodes of the upcoming Netflix US limited series ‘American Primeval’ directed by Hollywood director Peter Berg and produced by Eric Newman. It is due to be released this autumn. Art lives with his young family in London and is married to award-winning editor Amanda James.
LBB> The ad/music video from my childhood that stays with me…
Art> Depeche Mode - Enjoy the Silence directed by Anton Corbijn.
I grew up in a house full of music, and my big brother was a huge DM fan. Every single album, 12-inch, or limited edition 10-inch, would be blasting constantly through the bedroom wall and a permanently closed door.
The quasi-homoerotic imagery on record sleeves, in the music press, and on Top of The Pops was confusing and quite inaccessible to my innocent, younger self-raised on the Beatles and 80s pop.
But, when the Violator album came out in early 1990, and we first saw this amazing music video on the Chart Show, something struck me, and I changed. Like a door left slightly open, a chink of light illuminating a hitherto unseen grown-up world, it seemed to invite me in.
LBB> The ad/music video/game/web platform that made me want to get into the industry…
Art> Radiohead - Just, directed by James Thraves.
I remember watching the Chart Show one Saturday morning with the video recorder on pause/record ready to tape the best videos and rewatching this one over and over afterward. At the end, they promised to reveal what the guy said the following week.
I seem to remember them playing it three weeks in a row and promising the same every week (which they never did), which I now know is because they didn’t know—only the actors, Jamie and The Colonel (Tony Kearns, the brilliant editor), knew what he said and nobody has spilled the beans since. Not even after many pints in the Star & Garter. A perfect fusion of narrative and performance, it is still intriguing, beguiling, and wonderfully entwines everything together into one of my all-time favourite music videos.
LBB> The creative work that I keep revisiting…
Art> I absolutely love live albums—Bill Withers’ Live at Carnegie Hall, Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, Neil Young’s Live at Massey Hall 1971 and The Band’s The Last Waltz. A long drive home at night with everyone asleep in the car and the music loud enough not to wake anyone but be able to transport me too.
LBB> My first professional project…
Art> Armand Van Helden - Koochy, directed by Sam Brown.
The honest answer is a Finish dishwasher tablet commercial whose rushes included an hour-and-a-half of opening and closing of a dishwasher, which nearly broke me. But the best answer is “Koochy” the music video that launched my career and first teamed me up with the indomitable Sam Brown. Found, forgotten, and sometimes stolen footage all wrapped into a fun and bold three minutes of sampled mayhem that served as our calling card.
I remember the commissioner, the great Scot Alan Parks, coming in to see us and informing us that Armand, an ex-film student, had a couple of pages of changes. He then told us he’d thrown them away and not to change a thing!
LBB> The piece of work that made me so angry that I vowed to never make anything like *that*…
Art> I don’t really get angry.
LBB> The piece of work that still makes me jealous…
Art> There’s a long list of work I wish I’d cut: Radiohead’s Just as mentioned before; Song 2 by Blur, directed and edited by the queen herself, Sophie Muller; Guinness Surfer, directed by Jonathon Glazer and cut by the genius Sam Snead; and also the Oscar-winning live-action short The Long Goodbye starring Riz Ahmed, directed by Aniel Karia and edited by the hugely talented Amanda James. But luckily for me, we’ve been married for 17 years and I’m never jealous of her; she works so hard and deserves it all.
LBB> The creative project that changed my career…
Art> VW - Enjoy The Everyday directed by Scott Lyon.
This is another landmark job for both myself and my good friend and collaborator Scott whom I have now been working with for over 23 years. It launched us into commercials on a platform that was edit-centric and utilised my musical background. Working with the lovely Paul Hartnoll from Orbital was another bonus. I’m forever grateful for all the people who took a gamble on us.
LBB> The work that I’m proudest of…
Art> Film: Hard Candy (Lionsgate) directed by David Slade.
With this being my first feature, having mostly worked on music videos until that point, David’s UK producer, the much missed and very special Barney Jeffrey, asked me on my first day if I was scared. At the time I couldn’t comprehend the question. “Of what?” I replied. Twenty years later, I understand why he asked me that—there’s a hell of a lot that could’ve gone wrong. Nothing did though, and it was another huge turning point in my career, and it also led me to work at Speade with the legend that is Sam Snead which I loved.
Music video: Adele - Rolling In The Deep directed by Sam Brown.
Winning an MTV Moonman is pretty much the Oscars of music videos and I can remember Sam calling me to say it had been watched on YouTube over a million times! Such a great song (it’s impossible to make a great music video without one) and how Sam paints the simply crafted but beautiful scenarios around it is utterly brilliant and it was such a joy to bring to life. I bumped into a friend in LA not long after it was released and she told me her daughter had asked for a drum kit for Christmas after seeing it.
Commercial: The International Red Cross - Hope, directed by James Rouse.
This was one of the toughest shoots I’ve ever experienced from the comfort of my edit suite. It included Arabic dialogue, a crew made up of mostly non-professionals, a female 1st AD in a Muslim country, and a child actor. But director James Rouse nurtured and captured two amazing performances that elevated the film incomparably. He was also incredibly protective of the edit and he fully deserved all the plaudits he won by shooting in such testing circumstances and creating such a moving and important film.
LBB> I was involved in this and it makes me cringe…
Art> Nothing that I can remember.
LBB> The recent project I was involved in that excited me the most…
Art> American Primeval (Netflix) directed by Peter Berg.
This is the first long-form I’ve done that hasn’t been directed by David Slade so it was definitely uncharted waters.
Due for release this autumn, it’s written by Mark L. Smith who wrote the screenplay for The Revenant, and is a six-part miniseries set at a similar time in the vast plains and roaring mountains that would become Wyoming, Idaho and Utah. Based on certain real events and some real people and places, it is a fascinating and at times horrific story of escape, longing and living in a wild yet beautiful land in constant conflict.
Personally, it was a great adventure and I really enjoyed the whole experience (apart from being away from home for four months). It was certainly a very different process being in the middle of such a large show, but everyone involved was really nice, generous, and supportive and I can’t wait for it to come out.
