Can you tell us any funny/interesting stories from the shoot?
At the beginning, we were thinking of images in colour but slowly, the choice of black and white film became obvious as we had to assume 2 facts: there was a visual trick to make and we had to avoid the animations of the t-shirt being drown in the video. The idea was not to be realistic. We didn’t try and have a perfect color grading as we wanted to integrate the motives to the maximum.
You've just created the 'Good Life' video for Kanye, it's definitely got your style stamp - what did Kanye ask for?
I think that Daft Punk put SoMe on Kanye West’s project. SoMe draws (he does all the artwork for Justice) and he called us up to make the animation and direct the video of Kayne West. It’s actually the same team as DANCE!
Is this video up against D.A.N.C.E at this year's MTV Awards?
No, because it’s been aired very late. We hope it’ll be next year! D.A.N.C.E didn’t win but we were already very proud to be in, among all these very heavy famous artists and directors.
Looks like you'll win either way! So, what are your next moves?
We didn’t win any award yet (since we only directed D.A.N.C.E for Justice) but the idea is to get a MTV award for sure! We’re working on several other projects for advertising right now, but we also have plans to make a video for a friend and rock groups...
Do you have any plans to create work outside of music videos? Like a full film?
We’re just starting in music videos because actually, it’s
only been 2 years since we started. We still have lots of ideas, lots of tricks to explore in 3 minutes. We’re also thinking about a short film, something longer, a different way to make images.
Where would you like to be in five years time? How would you like to be perceived?
For the moment we just jump from one video to another! It demands so much energy that we don’t really see what it’s gonna look like in a few years. We’re hoping to have some career in video making as many of our predecessors, with the opportunity to always be able to choose what we want to do and with which artists, without any other worries.
We want to find some new visual effect that people will talk about!
We also see each other with bears.
Your work is very typographical, can you describe the creative process? What techniques do you use?
We also do drawing like SoMe does for Justice or Kayne West. For these 2 videos, SoMe did his own artwork and we let him compose his own typos and drawings. Next time, we’ll use and animate our own designs.
When we worked with SoMe, we listened to the gig all together and decide what kind of visual would work well with the sound and lyrics. We also try to have some parts with completely different graphic effects. We, then make the cuts and mime the scenes at the same time to see how it would work. After the shooting, we always have new ideas, lots of unexpected suprises, especially with an artist like Kayne West who’s got his own way of moving.
We could think about new things while SoMe would draw new stuff, and then animate them to include them onto the video.
A real well organised machine actually. But it doesn’t exclude bad stuff that we had to reconsider!
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW:: Jonas & François
