Director Essay - Michel Gondry

Michel Gondry

Although he won an academy award for his filmmaking, Michel Gondry is a talented music video director who is noted for his mise-en-scene manipulation and his inventive visual style. The Auteur Theory suggests that a director creates films that relate to their own personal vision, as if it was their project. Gondry shows to be no exception to this; his variation of music videos show his love for the effect given off by stop motion, and his love for surreal and comical devises are also included in his music videos.

On of these inventive visual styles is his love of stop motion; the video “hardest button to button” by the White Stripes. Having already directed music videos for The White Stripes such as “Fell in Love with a Girl” and “Dead Leaves the Dirty Ground”, the artists were well aware and also fans of his creative vision and style. The music video simply consisted of the two band members in a typical New York urban setting. However, Gondry used 32 identical Ludwig drum kits, 32 identical amplifiers and 16 identical microphone stands during the shoot. The editing style creates a natural but exciting pace to the song; every time meg would beat the drum, a new kit would appear and she would appear that she is moving along. Although being a very time, consuming yet effective visual, the editing matched to the strong rhythm of the song amplifying the beat of the drum making the video seem even more catchy and exciting. 

However, Michel Gondry is not only famous for his editing technique of stop motion, he is also well known for his surreal concept ideas. One of his most famous music videos that demonstrates this is the one for the Foo Fighters. In the music video “Everlong” Gondry created a surreal and satyrical conceptual video with a small narrative style. The video was made up of a number of dream sequences from each band member.

The idea of having a music video made up of dreams meant that Gondry was free to make this video as surreal and extravagant as he wanted when it came to mise-en-scene; in one scene, a band member’s hand swelled up to an enormous size so that he could hit someone and although this hand was obviously not real, it still created a strange and almost comical effect. 

This music video also demonstrates Gondry’s experimental style when it came to visual manipulation; in the music video, Gondry uses only black and white colour in the scenes that are the reality and the scenes in colour that are the dreams. Although the audience know that the dream scenes look more realistic when in colour, they understand that this is Gondry playing around with his visuals.

Another music video that plays around with visuals is his music video for “Let Forever Be” by The Chemical Brothers. Like the White Stripes video, the music has a strong beat which reveals his preferred music genre. This video, however, has a very similar conceptual idea to that of the Foo Fighters video; the woman in the video is dreaming. Here Gondry used inspiration from Ray Davis’ 1975 Granada TV production of “Starmaker”. With the heavy use of props, Gondry allows the mise-en-scene to give the vibe of a performance on a stage, allowing the video to seem exciting but still with a strong dream-like sense. 

Michel Gondry’s directing style is easily recognised in his music videos and is a prime example of the Auteur Theory in which he fills the music videos with the use of personal inspiration, editing and visual preferences.