It's been nine years since Michel Gondry and his friend Beck collaborated on their first video, Deadweight. They have tried several times to do a video together, I am told, but their schedules were always in conflict - be it Eternal Sunshine, Beck's tour, or his son's birth. There were conflicts here, too, but they both made it work.
Since that time, postmodernism, of which Beck was a figurehead, has been just about obliterated by, among other things, the Internet and the events of September 11th, 2001. Surrealism, one of the benchmarks of postmodernity, has now become a part of our mediated universe. And, according to Beck's latest album, The Information, the surreal takes on a darkish tinge in the shadow of no towers (to steal a phrase).
Meanwhile, Michel has continued along his own, inimitable tangent by making a slew of brilliant videos and feature films which are more personal than cultural. Cellphone's Dead shows how each man has matured in their craft, and how their two worlds collide. Beck's flow could wipe out glaciers, while Michel's confidence is increasingly palpable.
The video features Beck in a room. As Michel's treatment notes, it has a black-and-white, 50's film noir vibe to it. Incriminating spotlights and art deco furniture bounce off a variety of textures: flock wallpaper, wood siding, Beck's plaid suit, and the New York cityscape as inspired by Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Throughout the video all of the room's objects mutate and hybridize, birthing new forms of beings which kind of meander around a bit.
The video's editing is remarkable in that it's not editing in any traditional sense of the word, but a jigsaw puzzle of effects conducted by the folks at Fly Studio. Pieces of furniture fly across the room as windows turn into doors which then walk around. And occasionally our hero disappears from view. (At this point it's hard to say if that speaks to the dehumanizing aspect of technology or to its potential, but it's perhaps a bit of both [says the guy who writes for a website]).
Cellphone's Dead seems part of a new side of Michel's work that emerged with The All-Seeing Eye, which also took a designated space, unraveled its contents, and pieced them back together. This video won an MVPA Award for Best Alternative Video.
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A Rolling Stone news article has nine full-color pictures from production, which took place on 11 June 2006. Since that article is off-line, here they are: (1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9)
Treatment
The scene unfolds in a small New York apartment. It's a bit run down and, at first glance, looks simple. Through the window, we see an adjacent ominous building. The room has a 50's era film noir feel to it. Additionally, everything we see is black and white.
A window, a TV, a phone, frames on the wall, a door, an armchair and a hanging lamp. The camera slowly moves forward. Shortly after the beginning, a completely absurd transformation occurs. The seemingly simple scene changes. The armchair mutates into a hybrid object: the offspring of an armchair and a door. The window with the New York view transforms into a hybrid between the building and the TV. Everything in the apartment becomes a complex mutated hybrid object.
The transformation continues until the armchair has fully become the door. The window with the building and view has transformed into the TV, and the TV has mutated into the armchair. After having crossed a complete chaotic stage, the entire apartment becomes visibly normal again, only it is seen now from a different perspective.
Instead of simply moving the camera, we have transformed all of the elements of the first angle into elements of the next angle - as if we have crossed an invisible, enigmatic dimension, just to move from one place to another in this apartment.
Beck enters the room and sits in the armchair. He himself begins to become part of each of these transformations. Beck sitting in the armchair watching TV, will transform into the window with the building. So, for a short time, a hybrid between the armchair, Beck and the building will exist. Like a robot made of concrete, miniature windows, felt and flesh creating offspring of beings and objects in the process.
We keep moving through the apartment, using this technique and rotating our perspective as we follow Beck on his journey through this bizarre dimension.
The technique we will use for the transformation of elements will be different than the regular morphing technique. We will actually build real pieces for each phase of the transformation. For instance the transformation between the window and the building and the armchair, will be constructed and articulated to move in a mechanical-human way. These absurd objects will have their very own existence - they will look like modern sculptures.
Only the final joins to connect the hybrids to the objects or Beck will require CGI. The overall mood will be highly enigmatic and surreal, as if an unknown mystery had occurred in this room that needs to be solved.
We will shoot Beck in a constructed apartment on a stage for one day along with the constructed phases of the transitions which involve him. Later, we will shoot any of the constructed hybrid pieces not involving him in the same set. In post-production, we will use morphing and CGI techniques to create seamless transitions. The result will be a single shot because all of the transition will function as the editing.
The situations are changeable and will evolve. The result will be something never seen before. I am very excited about it.
MG
Credits
released October 18 2006
producers Raffi Adlan and Janice Biggs
production company Partizan
cinematographer Shawn Kim
editor Jeff Buchanan
props fabrication Tim Rossiter
post production at Fly Studio, Montreal
post production supervisors Louis Morin and Charles Bertrand
post production coordinator Fannie Laroche
post production producer Jean-François Talbot
lead cgi artist Antonin Messier-Turcotte
principal 3D artist Antonin Messier-Turcotte
3D technical director Patrick Faille
3D artists Martin Lauzon, Alexandre Lapointe, Muriel Tiberghien, Glenn Silver
3D camera Francois Giard
digital retouchers Daniel Torrico, Mathieu Jolicoeur
compositors Christopher Byron, Jean-Francois Talbot
online editors Sébastien Doyon, Sébastien Blanchard
colorist Edouard Lê
