Chapter 3
Collaboration and Inspiration
Michel Gondry
Mark Romanek
Music and the moving image are the main components of a music video. The production of a music video happens in a collaborative process between the inventors of the main components. The musician creates the music and the director produces the moving image. This makes the medium collaborative by its essence. The main part of the collaboration between a musician and a director concerns their inspiration. The song is a source of inspiration for the video director. The director seeks to grasp the notion of the song. As Michel Gondry says about his collaboration with other artists,
‘Basically, my job is to find out who they [artists] really are, to find something in common through which I can express myself, or conversely how they can express themselves through me.’ (Thill, 2006)
On the other hand, he finds it commendable when the musician comes with an idea about the visuals and gets involved in the process of making the video. As Jen Geldhaar the video director puts in,
‘If a musician is very involved in conceiving a video, it might lead to a great, unpredictable, non-formulaic piece. Or, when the musicians don't let the director do what they do best, it might lead to a video full of clichés.’ (Hanson, 2006:46)
Michel Gondry is a French director who is noted for his inventive visual style. His works are marked for their spatial gimmicks and surreal spaces. Gondry’s videos have a handmade look and they bring magic tricks to mind; they have a childish dreamy quality and are mostly based on simple ideas. However, on the other side of Gondry’s work lay complex designs and elaborate special effects. Gondry has directed over 70 music videos and he has collaborated with many music artists such as Radiohead, The Rolling Stones, Beck, The White Stripes and Massive Attack. As Gondry explains about his efforts, ‘I learned to collaborate but to make sure that I could use somebody else's idea and still feel that I'm not just the technician.’ (Hebron, 2007)
In 1993, he made a video for Björk’s first solo single Human Behavior. The project sparked a creative relationship between Gondry and Björk, which led to making six more videos together. Björk and Gondry both take an experimental approach towards video making. Mostly, the process of conceptualizing the video starts with Björk’s visualization of the song. He starts with her interpretation about the song and then dramatically develops it. Gondry finds the poetic potential of the song, and makes a story to explain it. As Michel Gondry (2003) says,
'When I work with Björk, she’ll come up with 60% or more of the ideas. I don’t care. I would be stupid to refuse all of amazing stuff coming into my head. She talks in very abstract words, which is very inspiring.'
As Björk says, the character in her video is neither Björk nor Gondry but a mixture of both. She says,'When I write, I plant little seeds. Then, the question is: When will they be ripe? And that is up to Michel.' (director-file.com)
Bachelorette was the sixth music video Michel Gondry made for Björk. The character in the video was originally invented by Björk, which is an exploration of self-referencing. Bachelorette lives in the forest and has a close relationship with nature. But she decides to go to the city and confront her lovers. Things go wrong in the city and she goes back to the forest where she is happier. Michel Gondry takes the initial idea and develops it (Mirror ball, 2000). He puts some of her ideas aside, links the others together and creates a little story that works with the song. He explains the process from Björk’s idea to shaping the story,
'She gave me the storyline. I asked my self what would be the most extreme stuff I could do with the character. To me the most extreme solution was to be in a romantic situation. So she is having an affair with the publisher. Also, I had this idea that she finds a book that tells her what her destiny is and she has to fulfill the destiny of the book to make it work.' (Gondry, 2003)
As Björk remarks in the video’s introduction, "One day I found a big book buried deep in the ground. I opened it, but all the pages were blank. Then, to my surprise, it started writing itself: 'One day, I found a big book buried deep in the ground...'" Björk, as Bachelorette, follows the story of the book, her own autobiography, My Story. She goes to the city and takes the book to a publisher. As it is written in the book she falls in love with the publisher and the book becomes so popular that it turns into a musical, featuring Bachelorette as herself. In the theater, the story loops inside of itself. The layered setting of the video helps the story proceed. So, at some point a mini-theater is shown on the stage. In the turning point of the video the publisher breaks up with her and the book begins to erase itself. As the characters in the book vanish, in reality they turn into shrubs. Ultimately the whole city turns into a garden and the book reverts back to nature. The video ends with Bachelorette happily back in the colorful woodland.
Björk’s Bachelorette, 1997, Björk as Bachelorette on the stage of the musical show
‘I just can remember when we were doing it [Bachelorette], we felt amazing, I had a great feeling that we were doing something that nobody else had done before. We didn’t have any clue if other people would like it or not. We didn’t even bother about it, because it was so much fun. We didn’t even go to that level of thinking whether it will be successful or not. It was just stupid to think like that when you are lucky enough to be part of something so magical.’ - Björk. (Gondry, 2003)
Mark Romanek is an American music video director. His collaborators describe him as a perfectionist (Romanek, 2005). He seeks his inspirations in Fine Art and his works are filled with references to other artists. As he remarks, ‘You hope that you can take someone else’s stuff, apply it to this piece of music, digest it through your own system and get this new thing.’ (Romanek, 2005)
The video Romanek made for the song Can’t Stop is an example of what he says. In this video, ideas of three sets of artists are involved. The video director connects the ideas and builds a bridge between Fine Art and pop music. Can’t Stop is a song by the American rock band, Red Hot Chili Peppers. The band's musical style is a fusion of traditional rock and funk with elements of heavy metal and psychedelic rock.
In order to present the band ‘as they are’, Mark Romanek borrows the idea of the Austrian artist Erwin Wurm. Wurm’s One Minute Sculptures promote questions of the very definition of sculpture. Wurm links a person and an everyday object in a temporary situation, pose, and position that are granted enduring existence only in photographs and video images. The motionless Action becomes a sculpture for a time, and a minute later, it disintegrates and disappears (Lehmann). Romanek interprets Wurm’s work as a democratic concept and calls it ‘everyday Art’ (Romanek, 2003). He puts the band in the context of One Minute Sculptures, challenging the definite relationship of them with objects. His cinematic approach towards the concept ‘makes it move’. In an empty setting, he uses commonplace familiar objects such as rubber balls, buckets, water bottles and trashcans as toys, having band members Antony, Flea, John and Chad play with them.
Erwin Wurm’s One Minute Sculptures, 1992
He believes the band members are distinctive individual characters so he tries to point them out by placing them in fitting situations. He balances the stillness of the space by embracing the band’s wild and energetic qualities. As a result, the video has a whimsical space, which is a common quality between both Wurm and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ works.
Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Can’t stop, 2003, Poses are derived from Wurm’s work
As Romanek remarks, the band responded to the idea of play. They have the same attitude towards their guitars as they have towards objects. The performance parts are mixed with the playing scene. The stage part looks like a playground as the band members jump around and make faces. Nevertheless, there is a harmony between the abstract actions and the song’s lyrics. ‘This life is more than ordinary’ matches the praise for playfulness in Wurm’s concept. However, the lyrics are a rather indecisive incorporation of poetic phrases, maintaining the rhythm rather than being expressive. The concept of everyday objects goes with the notion of song very well, as Antony Kiedis confirms,
‘That song meant a lot to us and it was important to have images that equaled to some sort of magical intensity of that song and the world he created allows people to go inside themselves and feel that enthusiastic spirits for life.’ (Romanek, 2005)
The music video derives from both director and musician. The creativity of the musician works side by side with the creativity of the director. The two artists come together and make a piece that takes both the music and the image beyond what each component could be on its own.