Gondry does Montreal!!!!

You want to break into the business? Make sure that Björk sees your stuff.

The traveling film festival called RESFEST made its inaugural pit-stop in Montreal this past weekend with two very special guests in attendance. The festival which celebrates innovative video, commercial, short and feature film filmmakers saw the organizers able to pluck 2 of the names from Palm Pictures ’ DVD Director’s Series. The Montreal double-bill featured (in the French language, merci) video artists Stéphane Sednaoui and Michel Gondry presenting a sampling of their more innovative video-clips, interrupted by some insightful Q and A’s.

Sednaoui talked about his videos starting with Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Give it Away which segued into other music videos up until a cool music-inspired short called Walk on the Wild Side.

The real cherry on the sundae was, of course, the discussion with Michel Gondry right afterwards. A dressed down Gondry oversaw the selections that were going to be introduced during the evening and was first asked to discuss his roots with an emphasis placed on his artistic manifestations – his grandfather worked on The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine and his oldest son, now a fourteen adolescent with a rebel look is quite the drawer. He accompanied him for the trip to Montreal (yes, that’s the kid with the Lego blocks).

From there he spoke about how he broke into the biz, and featured mostly videos from artists known in France (one of them being his own, admittedly embarrassing, rock group Oui Oui, in which he played drums). The rest of the evening offered a generous amount of anecdotes surrounding some of his videos and a sampling of scoops about his upcoming features. I liked the fact that he mentioned that the French New Wave took away the surrealist stuff from past films – such as the Méliès brothers. They also announced that there would be a world premiere offered – perhaps catch a glimpse of The Science of Sleep? More on that later, but if you are salivating for what that surprise was, simply scroll down below.

Here are some anecdotes & other quirky facts that I’ve translated for yer’all.

On his first art show as a teen: I invited tons of people and only one person showed up at the gallery

On how Björk found out about Gondry: She caught my last video that I made for my band Oui Oui.

On his relationship with the White Stripes: They often call me the third member of the band.

On his newest video for the White Stripes: The band was on Conan O’Brien for an entire week and on the last day I gave them a block sculpture of his to give to him on the show. I decided to make the video about this. I used a morphing technique which was then digitally altered. We had live objects that were squished, like the base drum, and when we stretched the shot in post, the drum set looked fine but the people looked tall. It was one fluid shot that we got on the last try – the 17th to be exact.

– For more details on the making of that video click here for part 1 and here for part 2.
– Click here to view the video for White Stripes’ Denial Twist.

On working with Kylie Minogue from “Come Into My World” video: Extremely professional. She wants to get it right and she is very attentive.

On the “Come into My World” video effect: It’s a simple looping technique. (A more detailed explanation can be found on his “Directors’ Lable” DVD)

On the folks at the Lego company and how many hours it took to make the video: The White Stripes asked them to participate and they declined. When the video came out they came calling, and the White Stripes told them to fuck off. I got the idea from this Steven Speilberg Lego filmmakers kit I had given to my son. I played around with it with my son and thought it would be cool to make something using Legos. My family are computer programmers and they created a software that broke down each digital shot we took of the band playing into lego blocks. We then printed out each frame and physically built each frame out of Legos using the prints as guides. We photographed each the constructions, then tore them apart to build the next frame. It took 2 months to make.

On Lego blocks versus Playmobil: Legos are a lot cooler – you have to build stuff. Playmobil is stupid, there’s no creativity. But, Playmobil was allowed to succeed because they took advantage of the fact that it takes Lego’s 10 years to go from an idea to the actual production of that idea.

On being an Inventor: I wanted to be an inventor. When I was young me and my brother would invent a lot of things, except they already existed and the versions we built didn’t work.

On his nightmares: I often had nightmares of giant hands.

On his work in the two formats: I often like merging video world and film world’s together.

On ripping off other people’s ideas: I’m inspired by other artists, but I don’t take credit for my inventions, because most likely someone, somewhere will have already done what you have done. It’s relationships such as the one with Sednaoui which drive me to come up with new ways and techniques. (He also mentionned at this point how he had conceived of and applied the technique which is now referred to as bullet-time (ie: the Matrix films). He was later accussed of stealing the idea from someone else, but he simply found that ridiculous and admitted that the truth is they both created this technique without knowledge of the eachother)

On Fax Machines: It was a true accomplishment to send a full storyboard via the fax machine. When fax machines became popular it allowed people to draw more, hence get more creative – this disappeared with the advent of the internet’s email but at least when I send storyboards it’s a lot less of an arduous task.

The world premiere was not a clip from one of his films, but instead a nifty video from it was a Kayne West with Adam Levine called Heard ‘Em Say. Coming off the heels of the Katrina disaster, the looting and West’s comments about the president, this video was shot in Macy’s department store. The narrative of the vid is dreaming for a world of security and a little fantasy meets the shopping spree of a life time. Children play in beds, West dresses up and down and Levine is a security man making sure that no one disturbs them.

And now his upcoming films…

Dave Chappelle’s Block Party :
Gondry was brief, basically outlining that the film was part documentary and features dozens of popular musical artists. The film will be released in early 2006.

The Science of Sleep:
Gondry’s mentions that it is based on events that transpired in a former relationship of his and the original script can best be related to the dream world qualities found in the video for the Foo Fighter’s Everlong. The film is completed and is in the finishing stages of post-production and Gondry mentioned that his producer is zoning on one of the major festivals of 2006 – Gondry was tight-lipped on which fest (his producer told him not to divulge which festival), but my guess is that it will drive buyers into a frenzy at this year’s Cannes.

Master of Space and Time:
Currently in the script stage, this sci-fi novel by Rudy Rucker was suggested by a friend of Gondry’s who thought the book would interest the filmmaker as it resembled the world in which Gondry likes to create in his films. He mentioned to me that he’ll be working on other projects (videos, etc) while this one develops.

As long as Gondry wrestles with the elements during the certain stages of his sleep its safe to say that the stimulus behind his creative drive will not cease to burnout. Pure and simple – this Frenchman is a genius, a fountain of originality and innovativeness that will make many filmmakers think how’d he do that?