Michael Gondry
Michel Gondry who? Yes, he is a Frenchman. He is also a film, commercial, and a music video director, and a screenwriter; well noted for his flashy visual style and mise en scene. Michel Gondry was born on May 8, 1963, in Versailles, France. Much of his freewheeling and freethinking style is credited to his upbringing. He had a family that supported and nurtured his early creative endeavors. His parents harbored a deep love of pop music and the works of Duke Ellington, in particular. Michel Gondry’s grandfather, Constant Martin, is often credited with creating one of the earliest synthesizers (the Clavioline), and although his father would lament his own lack of musical talent, he kept the spirit alive by owning a shop that sold musical instruments. Though the shop would later go out of business due to the elder Gondry’s generosity toward young musicians (Michel relates that his father would practically give his instruments away), that generosity did extend to his immediate tankless water heaters family. Young Michel and his brother received a drum kit and a bass guitar, respectively, before the shop closed its doors. This allowed the young Gondrys to form a punk-rock band. Michel Gondry would also collaborate with his siblings on a series of short films in which they were constantly trying to try something new from a microdermabrasion machines technological point-of-view. As a youngster, Michel Gondry’s career ambitions were to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps, to be an inventor. His skills as a draughtsman brought him to art school in Paris. There, he would form the band Oui Oui. It was with the extraordinarily inspired videos that seo services company Michel Gondry created for the band that propelled his early sparks of creativity. He mixed animation with live action to create a series of wildly surreal and strangely beautiful worlds. The videos would serve as his calling card to the world of film. It was through one of these videos that he caught the attention of the somewhat eccentric singer Björk. Soon, the dog wheelchairs two of them were working on the video for her song “Human Behavior” from her post-Sugarcubes solo debut album. The video first aired in 1993. Its organically outlandish images complimented Björk’s musical style so well. This marked the beginning of an enduring collaboration between the two artists. Although Michele Gondry would work with Björk frequently in the following years, the success of “Human Behavior” had other artists lining up to work with him. Artists such as the Rolling Stones, Massive Attack, Kylie Minogue, and Beck all want to collaborate with the visionary director. Never content with the status quo, Michel Gondry is always on the lookout for new ways of doing things, to create, to invent. One of his videos for a French band IAM’s track “Je Danse le Mia” used a new morphing technique; it became quite prevalent in film and video throughout the 1990s. In 1994 he directed a video called “Lucas With the Lid Off,” another experiment. “I wanted to play with the idea of editing physically,” he said. “Instead of shooting a room from several angles, we built several rooms and moved the camera.” In one continuous shot that lasts the duration of the four minute video, we see the backs of sets, lighting stands and even crew members milling about In front of each tableau are numbered wooden frames that mark the “real” frames of the video, the shots that would be cut together if it were edited. “The idea was to see all the rubbish around the set and in between see the good angle.” During this period, Michel Gondry also helmed commercials for such clients as Levi’s, Nike, and BMW. Videos for bands like the White Stripes and Foo Fighters kept him working with the some of the hottest names in the music industry. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before Michel Gondry tried his hand at feature film territory; And with Human Nature, a 2002 comedy, that’s exactly what he did. Though the Charlie Kaufman-scripted film did indeed translate his quirky and unique visual world onto the large screen, Human Nature ultimately proved a bit too odd for mass consumption and barely scored a blip on the box-office radar. Those familiar with his work, however, warmly embraced the film for the most part. In 2004, teaming up once again with Charlie Kaufman, they cobble together the tale of a troubled couple who have their memories of each other erased after their traumatic breakup in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The film had Michel Gondry collaborating with Jim Carey, Kate Winslet, Elijah Wood, and Kirsten Dunst. The film was a sizeable indie hit and it led Michel Gondry to the Academy Awards with a Best Original Screenplay Award with co-screenwriters Charlie Kaufman and Pierre Bismuth.