Jonathan Dayton was born in Alameda County, California on July 7 1957. Having graduated from Ygnacio Valley High School in Concord, Dayton enrolled at the famed University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he studied film and television. During his time there, he met a young dance student called Valerie Faris, a native of Los Angeles who was one year younger and shared a similar passion. Upon leaving university, the two continued to work together and formed an inseparable bond that would eventually lead to marriage. Their first professional collaboration together was on the cult series The Cutting Edge in 1983, which showcased up-and-coming talent under the production of IRS Records. Their next notable effort came in 1986 with Belinda, a short documentary that charted the new success of singer Belinda Carlisle, who had left the pop group The Go-Go’s the previous year and had begun to promote her debut album.

In 1988, Dayton and Faris produced the hit documentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years for independent filmmaker Penelope Spheeris. Charting the rise of hair metal in Los Angeles during the mid-1980s, the film featured the likes of W.A.S.P., Poison, Faster Pussycat and Alice Cooper and would cater to the young rock crowd who watched shows like The Headbangers Ball and Power Hour religiously. They had also begun to shoot music videos themselves, having made their first effort, Wolves Lower for a then unknown R.E.M., in 1982. Their first major success would become in the fall of 1990 when Been Caught Stealing, the breakthrough track for cult group Jane’s Addiction, took the indie scene by storm. Other hits would soon follow, including Soundgarden’s Outshined and Extreme’s number one success More Than Words. In 1993, they documented The Jim Rose Circus Sideshow performance at Seattle’s Moore Theatre, in which Rose and his cohorts would perform all manner of disturbing tricks.

As well as re-uniting with R.E.M. for two singles during the mid-1990s, Dayton and Faris would be hired to direct a video for a track called Rocket by a young group called Smashing Pumpkins. Formed in 1988 by twenty-one year old Billy Corgan, the band would become one of the most popular of the early’90s scene that would also include Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the old school Sonic Youth. Corgan was born in Elk Grove Village, Illinois on March 17 1967 and first developed a passion for music whilst in high school, learning songs by his favourite groups like Cheap Trick and Black Sabbath. After a brief move to St. Petersburg, Florida in 1985, Corgan began writing songs with fellow guitarist James Iha. Eventually, after meeting bassist D’arcy Wretzky and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, The Smashing Pumpkins were formed in October 1988. Having released their first album, Gish, in May 1991 to a rather lukewarm reception (due to the phenomenal success of Nirvana’s Nevermind), they produced their follow-up, Siamese Dream, two years later.

Having scored a major triumph, Corgan knew that expectations would be high for their next release and so commenced work on the daunting task of writing another masterpiece. Issued as a double album with a total of twenty-eight tracks, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was released on October 24 1995 and became an instant commercial and critical success. Samual Bayer (whose feature debut, A Nightmare on Elm Street, is due for release next year) directed the band’s first video to promote the album, Bullet with Butterfly Wings, which was shot in Los Angeles at the same time as Mellon Collie hit the shelves. Dayton and Faris were drafted in to shoot their next video, 1979, which was filmed the following January. As the public went Pumpkins crazy, the group were forced to shoot music videos one after another, whilst also simultaneously preparing to embark on their exhaustive world tour. Thus, Yelena Yemchuk, Corgan’s then girlfriend, directed the promo for Zero in March 1996, with Dayton and Faris brought back immediately afterwards to shoot Tonight, Tonight.

Corgan had a vague idea of what kind of video he wanted for the track and had drawn various sketches inspired by the artwork for the album sleeve, which had been designed by Yemchuk. Sending his ideas to Dayton and Faris, they were reminded of Le Voyage dans la lune, a French short had had been produced in 1902 by brothers Georges and Gaston Méliès. The former was an ex-magician who had used his theatre background to design elaborate sets and special effects, often by having the backgrounds simply drawn onto the walls (a crude form of matte paintings). Although he had been directing for several years by that point (he had attended the world’s first ever public screening of a moving image and had directed the first ever horror film, Le Manoir du diable, in 1896), Le Voyage dans la lune is arguably his most famous work and would inspire generations of filmmakers. Using both the short and Yemchuk’s artwork as inspiration, Dayton and Faris commenced work on developing a treatment based on Corgan’s suggestions.

Working through a daunting eighteen-hour shoot, the directors would require a team of talented artists to help bring their vision to life. The sets that were deigned, using similar techniques that Méliès had employed, although with more state-of-the-art equipment, were extensive and extremely detailed, although the cameras were only able to shoot from one angle without the risk of revealing the background to be merely painted. To help create a unique and fantastical look for the film, the directors brought in cinematographer Declan Quinn who, like The Smashing Pumpkins, was raised in Chicago. Brother of actor Aidan Quinn (Desperately Seeking Susan, Stakeout), he had worked on two documentaries for U2 before moving onto movies with Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare. He had previously worked with Dayton and Faris on The Jim Rose Circus Sideshow and had ample experience shooting music videos (which had included The Fly by U2).

One important presence on set was that of Bart Lipton, Dayton and Faris’ producer who would remain with them during their transition to feature films with Little Miss Sunshine in 2006. Lipton met the directors in 1991 and soon became their most trusted collaborator, producing their various music videos and commercials. In 1993, the trio were brought in to help shoot a pilot for a show that was to be produced by Madonna’s label Maverick Records, in which The Smashing Pumpkins performed their track Geek USA on stage surrounded by clowns. The shot, which was presented by comedienne Janeane Garafolo (last seen in season seven of 24), was never broadcast but introduced the group to the filmmakers that would play an integral role to their later success. Lipton would also work alongside Corgan towards the end of the band’s career (they would split up in 2000 and then reform six years later), helping to produce documentaries that saw the band performing their farewell tour.

The shoot for Tonight, Tonight took place in Los Angeles in March 1996, their fourth video in as many months. Wishing to avoid simply using digital effects, Dayton and Faris instead opted to use the same simple tricks that Méliès pioneered. For instance, during a scene in which the strange moon men begin to harass the young couple (played by real-life couple Jill Talley and Tom Kenny of the cult sketch show The Edge), the woman begins to hit them on the head with her umbrella, causing them to vanish in a puff of smoke. This was simply achieved by pausing the film, replacing the actors with smoke bombs, and then starting the cameras again, creating the image that they had disappeared. Each member of the band had to be filmed separately in front of a different background, with each shot contained several different layers. Despite Corgan and his band mates being exhausted from constant touring, promoted and shooting videos, they remained in high spirits and were more than happy to tolerate the hassles that come with filmmaking.

When the shoot was finally completed, Wretzky was so impressed with the sets that the crew had created that she had them shipped out to her farm. Once the video had been edited by Eric Zumbrunnen (who regularly worked with Spike Jonze) and ready was to be screened, a copy was sent out to the group who by that point had embarked on their biggest tour to date. Viewing the promo in the tour bus as they travelled between shows, each member agreed that Dayton and Faris had produced something truly special. Tonight, Tonight was released on April 15 1996, the fourth single to be released off Mellon Collie (following Bullet with Butterfly Wings, 1979 and Zero) and became a huge success, receiving regular airplay on MTV and positive reviews from various music magazines and radio stations. The video itself won several awards at the 1996 MTV Video Music Awards including Video of the Year, Best Direction and Best Special Effects.

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Cunningham was born on October 15 1970 in Reading, Berkshire, before relocating to Lakenheath, Suffolk. Having first entered the industry sculpting puppets for the popular satire serial Spitting Image, he progressed to feature films with Nightbreed, immediately followed by Richard Stanley’s science fiction thriller Hardware, which first demonstrated his affection for robots. After a stint on the troubled Alien 3 project, he teamed up with Stanley once again for his sophomore effort Dust Devil. Between 1990 and 1992, he regularly designed the front covers for the popular comic Judge Dredd, which would eventually lead to a role on the movie adaptation through August to November 1994, working alongside Hollywood action hero Sylvester Stallone and screen legends Jürgen Prochnow and Max von Sydow. His duties during the production would include illustrations and special makeup effects designer, working under the alias Chris Halls.

He soon came to the attention of renowned filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, who was currently working on his dream project A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Based on the short story Super-Toys Last All Summer Long by science fiction writer Brian Aldiss (who also created Frankenstein Unbound, which Roger Corman was later film in 1990), the premise focused on a couple in the near future who are eager to have a real child, with the revelation being that their son, David, is in fact a robot. Kubrick was fascinated with this idea and first commissioned the story in the early 1970’s, shortly after the release of his groundbreaking science fiction masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey. By 1985, the project had still not moved out of development hell and so he contacted Stephen Spielberg, who himself had become something of a craftsmen after directing two sci-fi blockbusters of his own, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

Frustrated by the lack of progress of the project, Kubrick suggested to one of his writers to read the children’s classic The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi for inspiration. But it would be the release of Spielberg’s dinosaur hit Jurassic Park that would finally convince Kubrick that the technology now existed to do the story justice. With Christopher “Fangorn” Baker on board as the concept artist (who would later work on the director’s final feature Eyes Wide Shut), Cunningham was hired on the strength of his work on Judge Dredd to supervise the visual effects. It soon became apparent that the project had once again stalled and eventually Cunningham bowed out to pursue his own career as a director. A.I. Artificial Intelligence was eventually released in 2001 and was directed by Spielberg (Kubrick had passed away two years earlier), taking the concept in a more family-friendly direction, something which Cunningham felt lacked the bite of Kubrick’s vision.

In 1995, Cunningham directed his first music video, the bizarre collage of images that he had assembled for Autechre’s track Second Bad Vibe. Finding it a disappointing experience, Cunningham began looking for his next project and soon made the acquaintance of Richard James, a multitalented musician one year younger than him who had slowly built a cult following under his professional moniker Aphex Twin. Having experiment during the early 1990’s with an Avant-garde style ambient sound, James was about to conquer the alternative charts with his next effort, Come to Daddy, an industrial piece full of demonic sounds and menacing lyrics (‘I want your soul, I will eat your soul… Come to daddy!). Despite receiving minor acclaim, James had been unsuccessful at marketing his image, but all that was about to change with the resulting promo video.

When Cunningham was sixteen-years-old, he was chased through the woods by a young boy of nine, who was trying to attack him with a hammer. Riding as fast as he could on his pushbike, he was desperate to get away but was worried that people would see him fleeing from a young child. The experience had terrified Cunningham and he had been left with the feeling of pure fear. Come to Daddy had purely been an experiment for James, eager to try different sounds without any real intentions in mind. But one aspect he would often include in his work were children’s voice, something which would recall Cunningham’s horrifying experience and would lay the foundation of his premise for the music video.

In a derelict council estate, an elderly woman is walking her dog when they pass a pile of rubbish, of which a television set has been left on top. The dog urinates on the side of the box and then suddenly the screen begins to flicker (this ‘resurrection’ by a dog recalls the ludicrous scene from A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, in which Fredy Krueger is brought back to life in a similar manner). A creepy face suddenly appears on the screen, causing the dog to become frantic and bark viciously at the image. A moment later, a group of children behind the woman and they quickly pick up the TV and run away with it, before they begin to attack strangers and cars with large pipes and sticks. Bizarrely, all the kids have the same face as the monster on the television. Eventually, the screen begins to pulse (in a similar manner to David Cronenberg’s classic Videodrome) and the figure climbs out of the TV and lays on the ground, as its scrawny frame begins to take shape. The old woman, unable to escape, comes face-to-face with the beast, which screams violently at her, before it is surrounded by the children who look upon it as their father.

The video was shot on location at a housing estate in Thamesmead, east London. When the filmmakers were shown around the area by a man from the local council, they were instructed that they were not to portray the area in any bad way, which can only make one wonder how they felt about monsters, random violence and demonic children. James himself would portray the creature in the television, which would provide the vocals to the song whilst flailing around frantically behind the screen (echoing Cain’s robotic appearance in RoboCop 2). The evil kids would be played by both children and, as Cunningham called them, ‘midget adults.’ The effect of having them resemble the monster was achieved by the makeup artists designing silicone and latex masks for the actors to wear over their faces.

Unable to shoot the necessary footage on time, Cunningham would return for another day to film various inserts that would make the editing process easier. The experience of making the video for Autechre had left him feeling disillusioned, both with his own talents and his need for creative control, and so with Come to Daddy he was determined to make the film that he wanted to make, without concerning himself with that others would think. Thankfully, James was on the same page and was extremely enthusiastic with what the young filmmaker was doing with his track. The resulting effort would be almost six minutes of true horror, something which would prompt various producers and studios to offer Cunningham the chance to direct his own movie, although he would repeatedly refuse.

Come to Daddy was released on October 6 1997 by Warp Records and proved to be Aphex Twin’s most popular song to date. The video would receive regular airplay on the likes of MTV, although it would usually be shown after the 9pm watershed. Cunningham’s hard work would eventually pay off, with the video winning several awards and being nominated for countless more, including a 1998 MTV Video Music Award. His relationship with James would be a prolific one and the two would collaborate once again two years later on another surreal promo video entitled Windowlicker, as well as two video installations (Monkey Drummer and flex). Come to Daddy would mark the true beginning of Cunningham’s career as a directing, resulting in a such unique videos as Portishead’s Only You, Madonna’s Frozen, Leftfield’s Afrika Shox and Björk All is Full of Love.

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