Hi and welcome to my blog where you can see the research, planning and pre-production work of a new music video for Daft Punk's Around The World. You can also find on here sample footage, rough cuts, behind the scenes and other vodcasts, weekly podcasts, and ongoing reflection on the process. Please use the links list provided to quickly find what you looking for!

Tuesday 18 September 2012

Michel Gondry Research

Gondry merges reality with surrealism e.g. in Come Into My World by Kylie Minogue and Everlong by Foo Fighters. He combines the conscious and the unconscious.

Rolling Stones - Like a Rolling Stone

  • Shot transitions – Gondry uses interesting shot transitions which are hard to describe but look like one shot is warping into a very similar shot. A way we could create a similar effect would be to record using two cameras that are right next to each other then edit them together with transitions in Final Cut.
  • Bullet time – Bullet time is used at some points in the video. Although we wouldn't be able to recreate this, the closest we could get would be for everyone in the scene to freeze while the camera moves around them.

Paul McCartney – Dance Tonight

  • Ghost effect – The ghosting effect is one of the most important and interesting parts of this video. Gondry probably used a green screen for the 'ghosts' and edited them in to the main shots. We could create a similar effect though by keeping the camera on tripod, filming the scene once normally, then again with different action. If we made sure no action was taking place in the same position on screen in each shot, we could use layering to lower one of the shot's opacities to create the ghosting effect.


The White Stripes – The Hardest Button to Button

  • Pixilation – From Wikipedia: ‘Pixilation is a stop motion technique where live actors are used as a frame-by-frame subject in an animated film, by repeatedly posing while one or more frame is taken and changing pose slightly before the next frame or frames. This technique is often used as a way to blend live actors with animated ones’. I think we could use this by filming a continuation of an action in a different position in the shot then using the tools in Final Cut to edit them into a pixilation effect.
Mia Doi Todd - Open Your Heart and Daft Punk - Around The World

  • Charcters are use to represent the instruments. For example the people in Around The World who walk up and down the stairs represent the bass guitar, when it goes up they go up the stairs and vice versa.

Interviews with Gondry:

New York Times - Le Romantique
The Talks Interview with Michel Gondry
The Independent - Michel Gondry: the mad scientist of cinema


From NY Times:

  • [on his films] Most of Gondry’s ideas seem to spring out of romantic turmoil or joy (or both). “The Science of Sleep” is based on a broken love affair; “Eternal Sunshine” is inspired by another. “It’s probably childlike of me,” Gondry said. “When people want to criticize me, they call me puerile.
  • In 1988, Gondry was playing drums in a moderately successful band called Oui Oui, and he began making stop-motion animation videos to promote the group’s second album.
  • Gondry uses his low-tech version of special effects to enhance the drama in his videos and movies, never just for show.

1 comment:

  1. Good, though try to really highlight the individual convention through font + size/colour/bold, plus provide specific screenshots
    Note too the timings within any vid of conventions you're citing - and learn from this exercise that you need to supplement viewing with reading to research any given topic in music video

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