Michel Gondry born in 1963 in france is an academy award winning film, commercial and music video director, famous for his inventive visual styles and ideas. His use of careful attention to detail and camera trickery make him a director that makes the most of his time in the shooting of his projects, with many, of his projects appearing as one shot videos a constant duration with the action perfectly executed and the camera tricks lending the inventiveness that is usually attributed to special effects added in post production. But if Michel Gondy's work is something it is something that refuses to be pigeon holed or repetitive, every video created by Gondry maintains his professionalism but plays with so many conventions, and there truly is no other director who can produce the visuals in front of a camera so well.
Wednesday 7 December 2011
Music Video Narrative
The videos of the Foo Fighters are always inventive and range from contemporary videos to surreal narratives. 'Everlong' is directed by michel Gondry, and is one of the most recognisable songs and videos of The Foo Fighters, the video uses different narratives with different colour schemes, time zones and aesthetics with the same characters trapped in a cycling dream world paying homage to many different films including 'Sid and nancy' and 'The Evil Dead', the surrealist and homage style makes Everlong a sensationalist piece, a music video that uses and abuses the conventions of Music Video to create an interesting and well shot video.
Music Video and Film
Music Videos upon many influences to make themselves interesting and attract a wide audience, a good music video can come down to its influences and how it tells a story already told, again and differently, paying homage to great cinematic visions. In the Red Hot Chilli Peppers video for 'Otherside' the direction and style is based on German Expressionism one of the grounding movements of cinema. It draws on the styles ability to create surrealism with minimalism and psychological nuances in the black and white backgrounds to create an effective music video, with a distinct Expressionist feel, a throwback to the founding directors of the darker elements of film and film itself.
The music video for The Smashing Pumpkins, 'Tonight Tonight' is a homage to the silent film 'Trip to the Moon', shot in 3 days the film was created to show the surrealist nature of the first science fiction film (as Trip to the Moon was seen) and recreate it awash with psychedelic colour, to draw a parallel to the norm of early cinema and its surrealism in acting and composition as it seems today, the music fits the song perfectly and the music, direction and band are so devoted tot he aesthetic the video comes off stylishly.
Tuesday 6 December 2011
Music Video Director Study - Spike Jonze
Born in the USA in 1969, Spike Jonze made honed his creative talent known by doing the photography (and producing) for various extreme sports magazines, his career really began in advertising, creating various award winning adverts for Adidas and Ikea before moving onto music video, television (co creator of 'Jackass' and executive producer) and feature film directing (has academy award nominations for directing and producing and is a common collaborator with regarded screenwriter Charlie Kauffman . He has created videos for R.E.M, beastie Boys, Bjork, Fatboy Slim and many others, his work focusing on the surreal and counter culture, one of his most highly regarded works, and arguably one that out him on the map was his video for Fatboy Slims "Praise You", the use of improvisation and handheld camera work was a stroke of genius that encapsulated the coming voyeuristic media that is shown on youtube and all over the web today. The dance inspired a documentary about Jonze's alter ego, the leader of the improvisional dance group and the troupe performed the dance live at the MTV Music Awards. Spike Jonze is most definitely seen as an icon for todays media creating interesting and innovative products. Today he continues to work at exactly what he is good at, producing the Jackass films and continuing to add heralded music videos to his repertoire, most recently for the rebirth of the Beastie Boys and for Kanye West and Jay Z's new single Otis.
Music Video Technique - Special Effects
Special effects are a great way to make a music video interesting, by creating something that can only be imagined is more possible than ever with modern technology and was always in the thoughts of the most classic filmmakers, as Stanley Kubrick once said "If it can be thought, it can be filmed". With this philosophy Music Video directors constantly strive to create the impossible and surreal, in this video Bjork is superimposed onto 2 different robotic humans, looking at the making of video above we can see how painstaking and stressful relying on special effects can be, but persevere results in a great and highly regarded video regardless of how hard the initial production is.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)