Michel Gondry is a French film director known for his imaginative and original music videos. Some of his most famous music videos include those for Bjork, The White Stripes, Daft Punk, Kanye West, and The Chemical Brothers. Gondry's videos are noted for their surreal visual styles that often use stop motion effects and conceptualize the music in creative visual ways, rather than directly illustrating the song lyrics. Some of his signature techniques include having objects multiply to represent drum beats or sections of the song. Gondry cites influences like watching a magic show as inspiration for some of his imaginative video concepts and styles.

1. Michel Gondry Michel Gondry was Born on 8 May 1963 In Versailles in France. He is noted for his interpretation of mise-en-scene and imaginative and original visual style. He was the drummer in a French band called “Oui Oui” and he directed the music video’s for the band. The music video’s caught the attention of singer Bjork who he ended up making a total of 7 music video’s for. He went on to direct music videos for a lot of mainstream artists including Kanye West, The White Stripes, Daft Punk, The Chemical Brothers, The Rolling Stones, Kylie Minogue and many more mainstream artists. Michel Gondry’s music video’s caught my attention as his visual style is very inventive and original and I would love to be as creative in my project. His stylistic influences come from ideas that he has had. For example the video he directed for Kylie Minogue came from a magicians show he watched when he was younger who layered thread through a needle and then revealed how he did it on the next show.

2. The Hardest Button To Button – The White Stripes Michel Gondry bought 32 identical drum kits, hired 32 identical amplifiers and 12 mic stands in order to make this video. He said The pattern, how it goes 'doot-doot-doot[-doot], doot, doot, doot, doot, doot.' This makes me think of 1, 2, 3, 4 ... 4, 8, 12, 16 ... 2, 4, 8, 16, 32." Thus, when Meg hits a beat her drum kit multiplies, and when Jack plays a lick his amplifier multiplies. They filmed it constantly over the course of three 16 hour days and the stop motion effect was added afterwards in editing. Iconography is apparent in this video throughout. The red and white theme that the band have kept to throughout their career is constructed in the video with their clothes, instruments and also with the costume that Beck is wearing when he appears in his Cameo role.

4. In the Daft Punk video “Around the World” Gondry describes listening to a band in the 70’s called Chic and one of their songs Good Times. He said that whenever he heard the bass-line he said he used to imagine someone running up and down the stairs and that was the inspiration for this video. Each part of the song is represented by a dancing quartet. Again in this video there is not a relationship between the lyrics and the videos but there is a relationship between the music and the video where each group of dancers represents part of the music. According to Gondry's notes, the androids represent the singing robot voice; the physicality and small-minded rapidity of the athletes symbolizes the ascending/descending bass guitar; the femininity of the disco girls represents the high-pitched keyboard; the "itchy" skeletons serve for the guitars; the mummies represent the drum machine.

5. Heard ‘Em Say – Kanye West ft. Adam Levine (version one) The video relates to the lyrics slightly as it shows a family who look homeless and Kanye is rapping about “can I at least get a raise and a minimum raise.” The video has a narrative which is not the norm for Michel's music videos. There is a lot of iconography in the video also with Kanye West featuring in most of the scenes which helps promote his star image. He usually doesn’t use a narrative in his videos, although this video is the exception.

6. The reference to voyeurism in the video shows Kanye west being watched on TV screens that have been stacked up together and the children in the video are watching him. There is also intertextuality in the video. In a reference to the film ‘Miracle on 34 th Street’, in the middle of the night Kanye and the children venture into Macy’s store in New York City, where Adam Levine, lets them in to the magical Christmas wonderland acting as the security guard. Michel Gondry’s trademark of using stop motion is also apparent in the music video where we see piano’s flying through the air, a car track being built and the young girl dancing with lights and lamps. The Music video went through a lot of controversy primarily because Gondry's vision seems entirely outside the current culture of rap videos, and those who commission them. Kanye West made a second version of the video.