Dec. 5, 2013 4:04 p.m. ET
Anthony Mandler has directed videos for a number of pop music's biggest sellers, including Taylor Swift, Rihanna and Justin Timberlake.
On Thursday, his oeuvre took a turn for the more ambitious: Lana Del Rey released "Tropico," a 30-minute film that was directed by Mr. Mandler and co-produced by Rick Rubin. The short, which Ms. del Rey had teased since July, features songs from her 2012 album, "Born to Die."
Compared with the recent wave of high-tech, interactive music videos by artists like Pharrell Williams and Bob Dylan, which allow users to manipulate what they see on screen, "Tropico" feels dramatic and a little old-school. It functions more like a mini-movie, with a plotline and cast of characters including Elvis and John Wayne.
Mr. Mandler's specialty—highly stylized music videos that mimic feature films—has garnered the 40-year-old a list of artists that come back to him again and again. Since 2006, he's directed three videos for Drake, five for Jay Z and 15 for Rihanna, whose "Diamonds" video has been viewed on YouTube more than 360 million times.
For Mr. Mandler, "Tropico" marks a career shift from music videos to films. Next year, he will begin working on his first feature film, "Tokyo Vice," based on Jake Adelstein's memoir about covering the police beat in Japan, and starring Daniel Radcliffe. Mr. Mandler is hoping to follow in the footsteps of directors Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry and David Fincher, who started out making music videos.
One of Mr. Mandler's tactics is to set recording artists in mini-dramas. In Drake's "Find Your Love," the singer falls in love with a woman who is dating a gang leader in Kingston, Jamaica. In Lana del Rey's "National Anthem," rapper A$AP Rocky portrays President Kennedy while Ms. del Rey plays both Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe.
"You know how you go to the movies to escape into another reality? His videos do that in three minutes," said Nate Ruess, lead singer of the band fun. Last year, fun hired Mr. Mandler to direct the videos for "Some Nights," which follows two soldiers during a dramatized Civil War battle, and "Carry On," which depicts the band cavorting through Manhattan landmarks and concert halls. The "Some Nights" video has been viewed more than 86 million times on YouTube.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Mr. Mandler briefly attended architecture school in Boulder, Colo. before returning to study film at the University of Southern California, where his mother taught cinema. When the renown Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni came to Los Angeles to make his final movie, he hired Mr. Mandler to be his assistant. Mr. Antonioni died in 2007 and the movie, written by Sam Shepard, was never completed.
At 24, Mr. Mandler traded film for photography and began shooting album covers, completing more than 200, including Usher's "Confessions" and Eminem's "Encore." He transitioned into music videos in the late 1990s. One of his first projects was the video for "Get Original," a single by the Black Eyed Peas, released in 2000, before Fergie joined the group. The clip takes place in an open canyon as the members take turns break dancing in the dust. A 2005 video for Snoop Dogg's "Ups and Downs" put Mr. Mandler on the map. He has since completed more than 100 music videos for artists such as Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Shakira and Selena Gomez.
This year, he completed 15 advertising campaigns, including one for Rimmel London with Kate Moss and a Cadillac commercial that he created with Spike Lee. His music video for Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake's "Holy Grail" received widespread attention this summer for being the first music video to premiere on Facebook. In October, he took two months off to get married and honeymoon. His wife, Denise Vasi, stars on the VH1 series "Single Ladies."
Write to Megan Buerger at megan.buerger@wsj.com
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