Michel Gondry is a visual artist that focuses on creative visions rather than the need of the music video to promote and sell the artist.
In most of Gondry’s videos he doesn’t even involve the artist in the video. Even when he does there isn’t much performance shown. His videos are very dream like and take a strange and different approach to what the song may be about. He makes the concept of his videos more by the sound of the song rather than associating it with the lyrics or the meaning of the song.
Firstly, Gondry doesn’t show the artist in a good or bad light. For example in the video for around the world by Daft Punk, they are not seen in it. Gondry said he “separated each instrument in my mind” so this shows that Gondry made this video based on the sounds he heard, he imagined the bas line as athletes with small heads and the vocoder as robots because of the electronic sound. This video has been created to give a visual representation of the song and not to make Daft Punk look good. In the White stripes video for The Hardest Button to Button he does show some performance aspect of the song, however he uses it to show the breakdown of the sounds in the song. Gondry said that in the chorus the song gets louder so “Jacks amplifier will grow bigger” Even though there is performance in this video which could promote the bands performance he has only used it to convey the creative visions he had of the sounds of the song growing.
Secondly, in the Foo Fighters video for Everlong Gondry said he felt the song was “a great mix of adolescent energy & romanticism” so it shows how Gondry hears a song and can pinpoint the feel or mood of the song rather than thinking how he could promote the band. The Foo Fighter’s are seen in this video, but rather than playing, they are part of the narrative, there is barely any performance in this video. This goes against the tradition rock genre video of which the focus is usually on the performance and instruments of a band. However, in this video Dave Grohl is seen beating the bad guys and saving his ‘wife’, this could be perceived as band promotion as it makes it look like Foo Fighters are heroes and save the day. This video is based on the dreams of Dave and his ‘wife’ so it is more visual than just watching the band play. The audience of the video has to focus on what is happening to understand the dream like state and the dreams story. This shows that although some may see this video as promotion it is mainly focusing on the visuals than the actual band. The is the same for Daft Punk, White Stripes and The Chemical Brothers video let forever be where there are many visual effects of a woman who appears to multiply and then condense in to one person.
Overall I feel that Gondry does focus mainly on making his videos visually creative and interesting rather than promoting the band. The main reason being that the videos he makes are like visual representations of the sound or mood of the song rather than just showing a band play or telling the main message of a song. Gondry shows creativity through his effects and they all come from visions in his mind. However, it is possible that as an effect of his videos and visions bands could appear to be promoted.
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