Director Michel Gondry brought together punk rock, Lego and stop motion animation in a new video for the White Stripes. He also created another visually synchronized video for The Chemical Brothers' "Star Guitar."
The White Stripes "Fell in Love With a Girl" begins with Gondry's son Paul building a Lego countdown, then descends into a stop-motion romp, with Lego/pixelized versions of the Stripes duo rocking through performances, swimming scenes and striking block visuals to the less than two-minute long track. (To view the White Stripes video please visit http://www.boardsmag.com/screeningroom/musicvideos).
"The video was shot on a Bolex with real Lego pieces. First I shot the basic rock video with a little video camera, just getting the band on blue screen, walking around and jumping in water and swimming," says Gondry.
In the edit suite, Gondry had the negs treated with a program that would, when prints were produced at low resolution, lend Lego-like shapes to enlarged pixels. Each frame was then printed out at large size on paper. Gondry and a team of punk rock Lego animators then assembled each frame from Lego and shot it with a 16mm Bolex camera. Various crisper scenes, such as close-ups of the band members' faces were built with twice as many Lego blocks to provide high resolution.
"The White Stripes music is so basic - drum, guitars and voice - so I thought using three primary colors worked. I thought the crudeness of Lego would represent them well," says Gondry.
"I guess even when you get to be more famous and have more money, you can stay with less pretentious concepts and go for the handmade look. I went to a Cure concert in maybe 1981, and before they started to play they showed an animated piece that was excruciatingly boring, moving slowly and with slow music. Animation for punk should be handmade."
As for "Star Guitar," Gondry worked again with the Chemical Brothers, for whom he directed "Let Forever Be." The 4/4 time layered techno track, has its various sounds and segments represented by different landscape elements seen from a train window as it passes through rural and urban France; each element is positioned exactly in synch with the music and as the song becomes more elaborate, so to does the landscape and passing rail traffic. The details are picture perfect with a reflection in the train window further heightening the realism of the promo.
"I was on a train trip with my girlfriend and I had shot some video and played this track and it went so well together. The idea is of a journey, escaping something and always moving was in the track. The beat is strong and each element corresponds to a different note in the song," says Gondry.
About 20 hours of footage was shot on DV, with Gondry bending his mind to finding landscape that matched the song and insuring lighting remained more or less constant. Then, working with his brother Olivier's Twisted Laboratories, the elements were synchronized, scenes were cleaned up and transitions were perfected in a process that took roughly two months. At the end of the video, when the train passes through a town, individually computer generated people are also used to represent different notes.
"The idea was to use the visuals to build musical partitions with a very banal landscape and a train. In some ways it was similar to Daft Punk "Around The World," where the partition was with the choreography. This time it was only the landscape," explains Gondry.
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•BOUTIQUE POST HOUSE VERSION2 SHUTS DOORS> New York-based
editorial/VFX/motion design company Version2 announced that it's
closing shop effective February 1. Owner Vito DeSario said in a
statement that the boutique editorial model he's been operating under
since 1988 was no longer viable in today's economy, and added the
decision was also fueled by his own desire to move on to something new.
"The company had become a size where we needed to pull in a certain
volume of work to feed the machine. I lacked the fire and conviction I
once had to re-staff and recreate the same model I no longer believed
in," he said. "Instead, I want to be part of something completely
fresh; a company that makes sense in today's market." •AMBER MUSIC'S NEW EP PHILIP MOSSMAN TALKS LIFE IN ADLAND, POST-LCD SOUNDSYSTEM> Having ticked post-rave and post-punk off his resume, musician and composer Philip Mossman can now add post-production. This month, the veteran rock musician announced he's taking over executive producer duties from Patrick Oliver at Amber Music, New York. Mossman first made his mark in music as a member of the Andrew Weatherall's post-rave band Sabres of Paradise way back in the '90s. He went on to score several movie soundtracks and later worked on Primal Scream's blistering Xtrmntr album before spending four years touring and recording with James Murphy's indie rock band LCD Soundsystem. Boards recently caught up with Mossman to find out more about his latest gig. Read more •DREAMWORKS AND PEPSICO PRODUCE 3D SUPER BOWL AD> Film studio DreamWorks and PepsiCo have teamed up with Intel and NBC to produce a 60-second Super Bowl ad for SoBe Lifewater and a 3D movie trailer for the animated film Monsters vs. Aliens. Throughout January, PepsiCo will distribute 125 million pairs of 3D glasses via Sobe Lifewater displays, which viewers can use to watch the commercial during the second quarter of the game. Directed by Peter Arnell, it will feature the brand's CG-animated lizards, characters from Dreamworks' Monsters vs. Aliens and several NFL stars dancing in a reinterpretation of the ballet Swan Lake. The Super Bowl will air on February 1 on NBC. •W+K, PORTLAND LAUNCHES RADIO STATION> Want to ask Dan
Wieden a question? Well, now you can! Wieden + Kennedy, Portland has
launched a web-based radio station and the agency's co-founder -
formerly a radio host before beginning a career in advertising - is
hosting a call-in host on Friday, January 9 at 11am. Listen online and
check out the full schedule here. •DAMIAN STEVENS LEAVES SAATCHI LA> Former Saatchi &
Saatchi, Los Angeles director of integrated production Damian Stevens
has left the agency to start up a post-production company in Los
Angeles called Arcade Edit. The editorial roster includes Kim Bica,
Patrick Griffin, Geoff Hounsell, Christjan Jordan and Paul Martinez. |
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