Little X - Auter Theory

Little X – Biography and music video analysis

Julien Christian Lutz (born 1975), better known as Little X, X or Director X, is a Canadian music video director. He also has his own clothing line X Fit. He was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, and is of Trinidadian and Swiss descent.

Julien Christian Lutz attended both Mayfield Secondary School and North Park Secondary School. A protégé of Hype Williams, X has been noted for his high-budget, visually distinctive music videos for popular music singles, including videos for R.Kelly, Uhser, Kanye West, Jay-z , Korn, Nelly Furtado, Sean Paul and The Wanted. He is currently represented by DNA - David Naylor and Associates, Hollywood, CA.

One of his trademarks is tweaking the letterbox format; instead of simply using black bars on the top and bottom of the frame to frame the image, many videos by X feature the bars opening vertically to reveal the video, and closing vertically at the end.

These were the Little X songs that we looked at:

Nicki minaj – your love

The wanted – glad you came

David guetta ft Estelle – one love

Korn – coming undone

All of the music videos that were looked at, apart from the korn one, included Little X’s letterbox finish. Because this is considered one of his trademarks you would expect this to be in the majority of his videos. Because the korn video is older, it could be suggested that he hadn’t implemented the trademark finish until later on in his career. Another of Little X’s themes is to make high budget, visually distinctive music videos. This is clear in all the videos that were viewed because of things like the location and the scale of the videos. The songs that we looked at spanned a variety of genres, and this is evident in the colours that were used. In the first three, because the genre is pop, there was a lot of bright colours mixing together but in the final videos, the colours were more monotonous, with the background colours staying the same for long periods before changing. Also, because of the differences in genre, the length of the shots were a lot faster in the first three, with the final video sticking to the artists throughout the video. With the first three, there is a lot of different scenarios going on at the same time, to reflect the tempo and the feel of the music. The songs that Little X has done all have reference to the song title. In the first video, the women are seen to be fighting over the love of the male character, and the song is called Your Love. In Glad You Came, the artists are in a party and signing to girls to express that they are glad they came. The wanted song is also the only one that we looked at that featured Little X’s name on the actual video.