WEEK 1 - amateur music video director

Amateur music video director

-        Michel Gondry

French director born on the 18^th May 1963.

He started his film making career by making videos for his pop-rock band ‘Oui Oui’. Most of these videos were influenced by the 60s and his childhood era, which developed into his distinctive visual style where he manipulates the mise-en-scene and image.

This manipulation can be seen through his use of practical effects and production design made from everyday objects – ultimately giving it a child like effect which often mirrors the mindset of the main character(s) featured in the music video/film.

One of these videos were shown on MTV where Bjork saw it where she asked him to make a video for her first solo ‘human behavior’. From this Gondry created seven more videos with Bjork.

This long-term collaboration led to success and recognition from other artists such as Radiohead, Foo Fighters, The Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk etc. This also led to making commercials for Gap, Smirnoff, Air France, Nike, Coca Cola, Adidas, Polaroid and Levi – which he won multiple awards for.

After Gondry’s success with advertising and music video directing, he started to focus more towards film making. His directorial debut was in 2001 with “Human Nature”, however it wasn’t until 2006 when he directed, wrote and produced his own film, “The Science of Sleep”.