Gondry was born on 8th of May 1963 in Versailles, France. Gondry was a successful music and commercial director. His family was heavily influence by pop music; however, when he was young he wanted to be a painter or an inventor. During the 80’s he went to an art school in Paris where he could develop his graphic skills further into his intended field. Over there he met some friends whom created a pop-rock band called Oui-Oui. The band released 2 albums ('Chacun tout le monde' and 'Formidable') but the band separated in 1992. Gondry was the drummer of the band, he also directed their video clips. From there, it was possible to see what his new interest was. Influenced by the 60’s and his childhood, one of his music videos was shown on to MTV where Björk was inspired by it and asked him if he could make her first solo video (‘Human Behaviour’) Their partnership was famous as he directed five other music videos for her. As his career became successful it led to commissions from other artists around the world wanting Gondry to direct their music videos, including Massive Attack. He also directed a lot of advertisement video clips for brands such as Smirnoff, Gap, Air France, coca-cola, Nike, Polaroid and Levi.
As Gondry became successful, Hollywood started to pay interest in his work; he directed his first feature movie Human Nature in 2001, adapting a Charlie Kaufman’s scenario which was shown at the Cannes Festival in 2001. In contrast, the film was not successful, this film allowed Gondry to direct Eternal sunshine of the Spotless Mind in 2004.
Human Behaviour - Björk
Above is one of the first music videos, Gondry have done for their collaboration with Björk. Personally, I am not particularly interested with the style of the music video and so I will not use this video as an inspiration for my own music video. I have put this on to show how Gondry has progressed through the years of directing music videos. Moreover, this would have been taken within the first few years of when Björk hit fame. So her singing techniques are not preferred by most.
Crystalline - Björk
This is another music video that Gondry has directed for Björk. This is a more resent music video and so it shows this through the amount of computer graphics that have been put in. The song was written by Björk herself and the producers were Raffi Adlan and Joel Kretschman. The directors for the animation were Peter Sluszka. The video was recorded on May 26th 2011, and premiered on You Tube July 26th 2011. As usual, the song was released earlier then the music video on June 28th 2011. The lyrics to the song talk about the process of Crystallization in materials and rocks, but metaphorically it comes from a more personal view, relating to growth of crystal structures with the growth of relationships. Björk took the inspiration for the song from cities and buildings "seems like each one of them has a different mood, different spatial tension or release". In her own words it briefly describes her decision for the song and so reflects her ideas for the music video.
Fell in Love with a girl - The White Stripes
Above was another successful music video directed by Gondry in 2002. The song is by an American Garage Rock band which was written and produced by Jack White. It was for the bands third album "White Blood Cells". The music video is a LEGO animation featuring Gondry's son at the beginning of the video, building LEGO blocks. It was shot frame by frame with each frame having the LEGO bricks rebuilt, 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 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". Pitchfork Media deemed it the best video of the decade. And finally Entertainment Weekly included it on its end-of-the-decade, "best-of" list, saying, "An idea so simple it's a wonder no one thought of it before 2002.
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