Another in the set of videos Michel co-directed with his brother Oliver "Twist", Winning Days is their second for the Australian band the Vines.
Twist loves stop-motion animation. For Winning Days he animates stones, flowers, sticks, and the weather to examine the world's unending seasons of life, death, and life again. Filmed out in the country, the Vines are plopped inanely in the middle of this video, as in this paragraph. Many of the images are reminiscent of John Downer's Peter Gabriel video Digging in the Dirt. And it pains me to say it, but the ruddy outline of a body turning into daisies could have been cut straight into Downer's video.
Like Twist's Hot Hot Heat video, this video falls apart without a cohesive story. In the middle of the video large rocks grow into a long line that traverses the landscape, a neat effect that was filmed backwards to minimize footprints. Yet ultimately they go nowhere in particular and, as nice as it is to see the beauty of nature and the hard work of caring people, neither does this video. ..nor, to be fair, do parts of this website.
See the video at The Vines' website, or search for Olivier at Method Studios.
