Our final video from the Dimension Gondry will be another Bjork video. It was very hard to select which one to go with as Michael has directed several videos for Bjork. It's for the song "Bachelorette" which was released as a single in 1997. This music video is an exploration of self reference. The video was based on an original idea by Björk, who saw "Bachelorette" as a continuation of the character portrayed in "Isobel" and "Human Behaviour". The art direction of the video was heavily praised. The video won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Art Direction.
A new dimension Gondry episode is here. It's the video for Radiohead's song "Knives Out" which was released in 2001 and which was taken from their album 'Amnesiac'. The video features Thom Yorke in a hospital by the bedside of a woman.. The whole video was shot in one take, quite remarkable considering the scene changes required. Attempts to interpret the surreal imagery and fit it with the song lyrics were dashed when Gondry eventually revealed that the video was autobiographical. Some may find thematic parallels with Gondry's later film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The "Knives Out" video was not included in Gondry's compilation DVD 'The Work of Director Michel Gondry'.
"Fell in Love with a Girl" was a one of the essential single releases from White Stripes third studio album 'White Blood Cells' . It was a very authentic video which featured Lego animations and Gondry's son was featured at the beginning of the video, building LEGO blocks and it was shot frame by frame with each frame having the LEGO bricks rebuilt, sometimes in a complex manner to seem as if it were an actual shot, and then formed together to give the illusion of motion. The video mostly consists of red, white, and black color. The White Stripes couldn't strike a deal with Lego, so they had to buy a large amount of LEGO boxes for the video.
The video won three MTV Video Music Awards in 2002: Breakthrough Video, Best Special Effects, and Best Editing. It also received a nomination for Video of the Year, but lost out to Eminem's "Without Me".
Another good one from Michael Gondry and quite an unconventional one compared to the other videos he directed. In 2000, Richard Kelly commissioned Michael Andrews to do the soundtrack for the film Donnie Darko. Its original score album went on to sell over 100,000 copies in part because of Andrews's remake of Tears for Fears' "Mad World", featuring Gary Jules). One video featured the scenes from the video while the other featured singer Gary Jules and scenes from every day life reflected in the hanging mirrors.
Another great excerpt from the Dimension Gondry series comes from one of our favorite Sinead O' Connor songs "Fire on Babylon". It was taken from her 1984 album 'Famine' which sadly did not manage to restore her fame of her mass appeal of the late 80's and early 90's. The song is about the effects of her own child abuse and expresses anger and rage through the lyrics. The video for the song was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video.
Released in 1995 as the third single to be taken from the album of the same name. As you know this song featured Tracey Thorn from Everything but the Girl on vocals. It was the essence of trip hop with a loping breakbeat, guitar samples and angst-ridden female vocals. Like the previous videos, this one was also masterfully directed by Michael Gondry.
Changing the course a little bit on DG with this video feature. It was quite normal and unusual for Gondry compared to other videos he directed. But we decided to feature this because we love the song. It was taken from her second album and the song gained wider popularity after it was featured in a Romeo and Juliet movie.
Here another great video in the Michael Gondry series most of you will remember from the 90's MTV heavy rotation. The song was taken from band's debut album 'Homework' and it was released in 1997. As already mentioned the video was directed by Gondry while the choreography was credited to Bianca Li. The video features five groups of characters on a platform representing a vinyl record: robots, skeletons, athletes, mummies and women as synchronized swimsuits move to the rhythm and beats of Daft Punk. According to Gondry, the video is meant to be a visual representation of the song in which each group of characters represents a different instrument or something from the musical arrangements. "Around the World" was Gondry's first attempt at bringing organized dancing to his music videos.
We could easy go on with ten videos from Bjork, but let's see who else Gondry worked with and whose ideas he managed to visualize in a music video. We will stick to the 90's in this next one and it is Beck from his tropical side. Gondry directed two videos for Beck, "Cellphone's Dead" and "Deadweight" and we have decided to feature the second one, which has also appeared as a soundtrack to the movie 'A Life Less Ordinary'. The video features scene from the movie and Beck in paradoxical world where the video and movie are in dialogue with each other, a rather different take on a movie soundtrack.
As you all know Michael Gondry is the famous French film director. Those who prefer music over the movies might know him as an excellent music video director whose videos were an instant part of the daily music televisions' airplay in the last two centuries.
Not sure where your Gondry story starts, my kicks off certainly with Bjork's "Human Behavior". It was probably played during 'Awake on the Wild Side' or some other VJ show during the golden era of MTV Europe in the early 90's. Gondry's big breakthrough starts with Bjork and she must have remained his muse for quite a long time as his aesthetics found the best use in her music videos. The places you never imagined, unrealistic dimensions, the surreal world you only might have occur in your deepest dream are just few aspects of it.
Important to say that Gondry also directed videos for many other artist including The White Stripes, Beck, Sinead O'Connor and many more.
Dimension Gondry is our very special feature where we will feature ten essential music videos directed by Michel Gondry which were instant part of growing up and our musical video evolution.
Björk- Human Behaviour
The song was written by Nellee Cooper and Björk and it dates back to 1988 when Bjork was still with the Sugarcubes. A video for "Human Behavior" was the first collaboration between Michel Gondry and Bjork. It tells a story about a relation between humans and animals, taking animals' perspective in a role play of a predator and a prey. Bjork's emotional woodlands meet with Gondry's surreal playground in a master piece. The video received six nominations for the MTV video music awards in 1994 and won one. It was also nominated for the Grammy awards. It also has several elements that are present in Gondry's first feature film 'Human Nature'.
