I recently came across a bittorrent of the superb late-90’s music video series Mirrorball which was initially broadcast on Channel 4. If you’ve seen the Directors Label DVDs from a few years back, then you can be pretty sure they got their idea from Mirrorball which also focuses on music video promo directors such as Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham, Jonathan Glazer, Jonas Akerland and Mike Mills.
I watched the Gondry episode last night, which presents some of his finest work. The man is a visual genius. Examples:
Massive Attack – Protection
Shot in one-take on a set that was built horizontally, this is the ultimate music video optical illusion. Some people are hanging upside down, some are lying on their back. It’s six and a half minutes of a slow-moving beautiful headfuck.
Cibo Matto – Sugar/Water
Based on the concept of a palindrome, this split screen story swaps over half way and required precise synchronisation of both members of the band. Say if the girl on the left put something in the postbox one minute in, the girl on the right will have to take the post one minute from the end in order for it to match up.
Daft Punk – Around the World
Sometimes when you listen to a song, you can see the parts that make up the song represented by something specific, like colour or an expression. Gondry takes this concept further by placing a dancing representation of each instrument to match the song’s numerous lines and melodies.
Lucas – Lucas with the Lid Off
An ingenius idea but a superbly executed video, again this video is all one-shot. Mirrors, video screens, a series of large-scale and small-scale sets with rapper Lucas running around getting into as many shots and as many sets as possible. All one take, no edits. Just imagine planning this video.
I think this has whetted my appetite for Be Kind Rewind. Any takers?
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005 . He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Cara Magazine, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, founder of Lumo Club, club promoter, event curator and producer of gigs, listening parties & events in Dublin.
This was a brilliant series, I remember it well!
Any chance you could send us a link to the torrent?
Uh sorry Stevie,
I downloaded it a few months ago. I’m pretty sure it was from thebox.bz or uknova though.
That video is fucking brilliant. I never realised how it was done. The amount of times I’ve seen it over the years and never thought about the way it was made. Deceptively brilliant that one.
New post after I realised that you had more vids there. The one I was talking about previously was Protection. The others I’ve seen before on the Michel Gondry DVD which I don’t think Protection is on (or maybe it is).
I was keen for Be Kind Rewind but mainly from the premise. From what I’ve seen in trailers and clips it seems a little laboured but I will happily be proved wrong
I loved that show. I’ve been looking for it for ages. There is a poor copy of some of the episodes on youtube, but you can’t appreicate the full glory. I think that the Directors Label DVDs are a direct spinoff from the same crew who did the Mirrorball series. The Suggerwater vid is perhaps one of my favs, and that series really captures Gondry at the top of his game. There was another episode with some English lads cooking up the whole lot on PCs, it was really slick, a good example is the Lyrics Born ‘I Changed My Mind’ Video, easy enough to find on youtube.
Ive got all these on VHS but I’ve no capture device to make them digital. If I figure it out I’ll post them up somewhere and relink em.