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"
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.
another good summary of style - well hyperlinked too. try to give a more concrete example of how you might use the inspiration gondry provides.
ReplyDeleteps. not sure i would class the shining or texas chainsaw as 'cheesy'; just cos it's 80's doesn't make it cheesy. :) both groundbreaking (for very different reasons) and pretty terrifying horror.