The formerly(?) married duo of Jack and Meg White are a Detroit band named the White Stripes. Their album White Blood Cells features the rockin' second single "Fell in Love With a Girl." Jack White throws out three verses about his confused but excited love for the girl with the red curl.
In the same spirit Gondry throws out this quick, two-minute video: a love affair with Lego's, one of the quintessential toys meant for children. Again his child-like nature has produced quite a remarkable video. MTV named it a Breathrough Video.
RES gives a full account of Gondry's process. "I really like the basic-ness of the music - one voice, one guitar, and one drum. I like this concept, and I thought it was very close to the primary color of the Lego blocks." On the video's creation: "We shot a very basic video of the band [in London], we edited it and then we had a program that pixelized the video, roughly the size of the Lego blocks and then we printed each frame [25 frames per second] on paper. Then we had an animation team building up Lego blocks to match each frame. Then we reshot each of those frames on a film camera. We didn't have enough Legos to do more than five frames at a time, so after five frames were shot [the Legos] were demolished to build the next five frames."
The imagery is kinetic and jubilant. Audio levels thump, people swim, a walk sign says "go!", and the candy cane-colored White Stripes jam out.
To acquire this job, Gondry didn't write a treatment. According to Meg, "One day he came to a restaurant and he had Jack's head in Lego." Jack: "You couldn't argue with that. When someone brings a Lego sculpture of your head to dinner and says this is what the video's going to be, you pretty much say, 'That's it, go ahead.'"
"I've seen 'Star Wars' build-ups and huge model displays, but this is the most intense creation that I've ever seen done in Lego, and definitely the most creative and original," said Roger Cameron, a senior designer at Lego. "It definitely has that retro feel, because they used just the basic colors and pieces from 30 years ago. They didn't even use green or orange." (MTV News)
The video has won many, mostly technical, awards, including an MVPA Award, and 3 MTV Video Music Awards. Jack and Meg accepted the MTV Breakthrough Video award on Michel's behalf.
Girl is available in America on a companion DVD issued with new copies of White Blood Cells. You can also find a Quicktime copy on #2 of a 2-CD single set released by Third Man/XL Recordings (UK).
Excellent copies of this video are at sputnik7.com. 'boards mag has a MOV here.
See this Making Of article at Lego.com.
