Director Profile - Michel Gondry

Born in 1963, Michel Gondry is one of the many directors of music video to have moved into film. in 2004 he won his first Academy award, for the critically acclaimed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Michel Gondry's work has a very distinctive, almost surrealist style. He uses a lot of high level CGI, but mixes it with pro-filmic, theatrical effects. He manipulates mise-en-scene to give a twisted, almost dream-like feel, due to his hige fascination with dreams and the unconscious. All of this creates a fantastically creative, almost avante-garde style that fits perfectly with the music for the bands he tends to work with, such as Björk, The White Stripes and Daft Punk.

An excellent example of his use of pro-filmic effects is the stop motion work he did for the White Stripes video "Hardest Button to Button".



This piece uses nothing in the way of special effects. They use 32 drum kits to shoot this, and simply add or remove as needed between each shot. The pro-filmic effects used here are representative of his style, and he keeps in the key motifs of the band, sticking to the colour scheme they prefer to use and shooting in their home town.

A great example of Gondry's obsession with the unconscious mind is his video for the Foo Fighters song "Everlong"

Foo Fighters lyrics

Foo Fighters - Everlong Video - Foo Fighters Music Videos

Music Videos by VideoCure

It stays away mostly from the standard genre conventions, with very little performance aspect until the end. He still uses the recurring Foo Fighters motif of the drummer being in womens clothing. It's a primarily narrative based video with a conceptual element, following a twisted dream of a young man to lead back into his bedroom, where terrifying nightmare creatures turn into the band members to perform the final chorus.

The video uses a lot of intertextual references, giving it, like a lot of Gondry's work, a post modern feel. From the Sid and Nancy references the dream moves on to the style of a cheesy 80's horror, with clear nods to both the Shining and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

It also uses Gondry's common motif of giving a surreal element by changing the sizing of objects. A great example is the scene in the video with the giant, oversized phone.

One of the things I'll definitely take away from Gondry;s work is to look mose and using profilmic effects instead of CGI, and think more about how I film something to give it the effect I want. I also may employ some of his more surreal elements, to give my video a more unrealistic quality.

Director profile - Jonathan Glazer

Beggining in advertisments, Jon Glazer has become a well-established feature film director. He has a very british sense of self-deprecating humour.

Both his music videos and adverts contain a lot of recurring motifs. He uses the naked male torso and a lot of masculine motifs. His use of colour is interesting. He often uses muted, almost monochromatic tones. He also uses wild animals, often caged or restrained in some way, as freedom is also a recurring theme in his work. The humans who have freedom often stick to their confined spaces while restrained animals try to break free. A classical example of this is the video for "Street Spirit" - by Radiohead.

Once again embedding has been disabled on the video. But hopefully I can upload some stills later to highlight what I mean.

This video demonstrates many of his key motifs. It's dramatically shot in monochromatic, and often shows animals being restrained and trying to break free, while people with access to freedom stay in there trailerpark environment. Glazer once again uses the male torso, once again demonstrating ideas of power, once again showing christlike imagery.

Similar effects are used in another Jonathan Glazer video, "Rabbit in Your Headlights" - Unkle featuring Thom Yorke (Embedding disabled again!). This is a concept based video that fits the lyrics well, with a narrative element.

He once again uses a lot of images of power, most specifically the final shot of the car crashing into the shirtless man at the end, while he stands looking almost crucified. Once again, he uses the naked male torso to represent male strength.He toys with reality throughout the video as well, using bad/odd continuity add a confused and disjointed feel, matching the man's confused state. He also once again uses a muted, almost monochromatic colour scheme to highlight the drama of the video.

Something important I'll take away is the power of using a muted or monochromatic colour palate, something that's definitely going to inspire me in my music video project.

Thinking

I do it on occasion!!

Been looking into a few different songs, and doing some brainstorming.

My first idea is based on the song "Divided" - By Tegan and Sara. (There's actually quite a few songs by them I'm thinking about - but I'm trying to get some variety in my ideas!)



If I choose to do this song, I'd definitely have a narrative based video, centred around the lyrics. My idea is currently to have the whole video centred around one girl, and as the song is about relationships, and feeling "divided", I was going to centre the video around a story of her and a guy.

I'm avoiding having any performance aspect in the video, as I have nobody to perform it. I'm thinking about having a concept aspect. I'll be uploading the photo's later of what I'm talking about, but basically the idea is that when the central girl (and I have a volunteer already) is feeling "divided", she'll have half her face made up, and a "divided" looking outfit.

It might work! Stranger things have happened =)