Spike and Michael
The music can be used to intensify the reaction and understanding of the image as well as imagines are used to reinforce the emotional response to the music. The two most recognized producers of this concept are Spike Jonze and Michael Gondry. With styles totally different, Skipe and Michael opened way to a new course of the music and image through their innovative videos, which were rewarded and/or nominated in many occasions for an award.
Adam Spiegel, well known as Spike Jonze, was born in 1969. Owner of a good sense of humor showed in his personality. Jonze always claimed to be an heir of the Spiegel magazine fortune which was far away from the reality. In the beginning of his career, being a marker of skateboard videos was the job that could be denominated as the door that opened the road to success. Jonze’s videos can be appreciated many times as ironic, simples or sometimes more complex. For example, “Cannonball”, his first MTV success music video made for the Breeders Band in 1993 and codirected by Michael Gordon, is notable for its creating a bite-sized, juniors version and pan outlandishness. The video shows Kim Deal singing underwater as a metal ball rolls down a suburban street going to different directions. At the same time the band is playing in a place that looks like a garage. Later, at the end of the video the group changed their clothes for clothes that are more colorful and with different style. With this characterizing Jonez wants to show the relationship between the cannonball, the band and the song. Having a deep visualization it could be denominated that the cannonball is the explosion that every person has to become whatever he wants, and the band that started singing in a simple garage with simply clothes finishes singing in a better place and wearing stylish attire. Although people could not remember the band, they will be able to remember the song just reminding them the cannonball rounding. This is how Jonze makes people to relate an image to a song. Another recognized video music from Spike Jonze with a different performance is “Sabotage”. This video was produced in 2002 for the Beastie Boys, recognized by the MTVs and got the second place in the VH1 awards. Sabotage is inspired by 70s police show, represented the great breakthrough for Spike Jonze in the map of creating music videos. Sabotage video is a parodic music video where the Beastie Boys make a representation of policemen works in a hilarious way. During display the video, it is observed scenes police cars speeding and undercovers dressed running after a drug dealer wanting to capture him. The beastie Boys band had their own style and did not want to lose their essence and it is how through this video Jonze makes a perfect demonstration of his great talent and ability mixing or combining producer’s and client’s perspective. Finally among many of Jonze’s productions, Bully Holly, interpreted by Weezer band, is as Sabotage a parody video giving homage to the past. In Bully Holly is seen the band making their performance in one of the scenes of the popular TV show Happy Days. Wanting people to remember or relate a memory in their present, Jonze inserts the past into the present showing a combination of the band playing with clips or images from real scene and also actors dance.
Michael Gondry was born in Versailles in 1963. Hs prosperous career started producing videos for his band Oui Oui which later could be the forerunner to his American videos. Gondry through their videos transmits the idea of how music can be converted into image. Characterized for his tangled style, he assembles and puts together many scenes into one piece. For example La Tour de Pise, interpreted by Jean François Coen in 1993, is one of the videos of Gondry where his style is placed in sight. In the La Tour de Pise’s reproduction, the video is made of cards which contain advertisings changing one after another and which at the same time show the lyrics of the song played. Another method used for Gondry was executed in Je Danse Le Mia from the group IAM in the same year, 1993. In this video Gondry uses the technique well known as zoom –morphing which consists on constantly being penetrating scenes one after another. This is how Gondry makes Je Danse Le Mia, playing with the sight of the viewer, showing different scenarios while the scenes or images keep going further and further every time. In the same year Michael Gondry attracted the attention of Björk, who later would become one of his best clients, to produce what would be his first video for non-French audience, Human Behavior. This video would become rich for the history of the music video. combining Bjork's and Gondry's ideas, both created a style of fantasy and reality making people to think if what they were watching was real or not. Playing with minds, imagination and an imagined world, two years later another similar, video where the play of zoom is used, is displayed. This video is called Army of Me played by Björk too in 1995 which could be considered as funny, bizarre, imaginative and touch frightening. For example, at the beginning of Army of Me Björk is driving a huge truck through a city, then she goes to check the engine and suddenly her legs, which were not long enough, stretch until she reaches the engine. In another part of the video she goes to the dentist who mysteriously is a gorilla with whom she fights to get a diamond and later she puts a bomb in a museum to free a man. Michael Gondry creates little worlds with every video, each one with its own and unique composition and rules, being the interesting of these videos to know what these rules might be and defining what could be a sub realistic fare or not. Additionally, Gondry’s job also tries to relate images to music through tangled scenes, fantasy, weirdness and imagination. The weirdness of these videos is what originates in people’s brain to keep those images, and later as soon as the sound of the music is played the images will automatically appears in their brains.
In conclusion, though the years the relationship between sound and image has been progressing with the help of new inventions in which the imagination of each individual is the only limitation that exists. Spike Jonze and Michael Gondry developed a great job as pioneers of this new style in which combined image and sound with a music video, making viewers go away from reality and creating questions about what is real and what is not.. Their jobs still persist in time and are taken as inspiration for other producers who might have different methods or techniques to express but the context to keep sound and image as one is the same.