JP: Auteur Analysis

Michel Gondry

Around the World – Daft Punk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9MszVE7aR4

• Very colourful style, disco/funk conventions.
• Different groups of people signify either different parts of the world or different parts of the music, or both.

Mad World – Gary Jules

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N3N1MlvVc4

• Street pavement and cars used to show average day, which is then contradicted by the people making shapes, a very unusual thing to see on a street.
• Matches music in the way that it is slow paced and relaxed.

Fell in Love with a Girl – The White Stripes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q27BfBkRHbs

• Colourful Lego used to attract attention and cause familiarity with audience.
• Visual effect of Lego stop motion causes audience to appreciate effort put into the video.

Everlong – Foo Fighters

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBG7P-K-r1Y

• The grungey, dark toned video reflects the nature of the video, which is very dream-like. The characters are shown to be dreaming together.
• The music works well with the video, very enigmatic and unconventional.

Like a Rolling Stone – The Rolling Stones

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4ollsKu1Ak

• The warping effect on the video slows it down, making it seem dreamy.
• The video is mainly performance based, however the crowd is completely still whilst being warped, creating enigma.

Human Behaviour – Björk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urrbhgC8PB0

• The dark colours and toy animals used in this video make the storyline very enigmatic, showing the artist becoming very small and encountering a hedgehog and a teddy bear, and going to space.
• It is very difficult to understand, and draws the audience in.

Knives out – Radiohead

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ1iMQA0egc

• The video uses dark and miserable toned colours to match the music being played, showing some scenes of upset including a couple arguing and someone in hospital.
• The video twists what is happening into something more childish, with the woman in hospital being operated on like the board game, ‘Operation’.

Army of Me – Björk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QDo1xG7Llo

• The video uses grey, industrial colours to match the video showing many large, metallic vehicles and an industrial cityscape.
• There is a recurring visual link with Björk and insects, as a moth was seen in ‘Human Behaviour’ and several bugs can be seen in this.

Ride – The Vines

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL_dI3GtB4o

•  The video is very unconventional, as it shows the band performing normally in an empty room, then when the chorus comes there are hundreds of people playing instruments as if they are all the band.
• The video is all performance based, as there is no narrative and it is all hundreds of people performing the song.

‘Around the World’ by Daft Punk

The music video for ‘around the World’ by Daft Punk is very unique in the way that the whole music video is set in one room with a large group of people split into different groups, each with their own costume for their group. There are four people in each group, and each group could be considered to represent a few things. For example, the song is titled ‘Around the World’ and the different types of people could show the different types of people around the world an what they represent, for instance the mummies representing the afterlife, the robots representing space, the skeletons representing death or the ground, and the swimmers representing life and the ocean. The different groups could also represent a different part of the song, for example the robots only begin to cycle when the vocals for the song start and the mummies are shown to dance in the spotlight during the bass solo, so the robots could represent vocals, and the mummies could represent the bass.

            The colours are used effectively to highlight the originality of the music video. The whole room is a futuristic-looking cylindrical room with an array of circular lights of different colours on the wall, and people in brightly coloured and extravagant costumes dancing around. The fact that the artists are not shown in the music video once is very unique, as is the fact that there is no advertising or voyeuristic treatment of the female body. The music video is focused on nothing but the music and the artsy nature of the music video, which could be a reason it is such a popular video: the fact that it challenges conventions.

‘Fell in Love with a Girl’ by the White Stripes

This is also a very unique and popular video Gondry has created, using the familiarity everyone has with Lego as a child’s plaything as a method of catching the eye. Using stop motion to create the video of the band playing music and undergoing activities is very well created, and the audience recognise this and appreciate the effort that must have gone into the production of the video, considering the smoothness of the stop motion, and everyone knows it would be difficult to change the Lego that quickly. The use of the Lego in the video does convey some conventions of advertising, but twists the concept of a music video advertising a product, and creates a music video within a product, so the music video could be the thing being advertised.

            The band are shown performing in the video, as is very conventional in music videos, but once again Gondry has twisted the concept and made the artists out of Lego, so their real faces cannot be seen but they are still shown performing their song. It represents the band as being very thoughtful and imaginative, as often the audience don’t think about the director and make a connection with the artist and the video directly. So the audience will think the band is very arty, and this could be reflected in their music, making it very good and unique. This will encourage them to research the band more and investigate some of their other songs.