Director of Photography

Jean

Jul and Mat, responsible for Metronomy's fab unofficial video for She Wants a couple of years ago, unveil their new video for Two Door Cinema Club's Sun. With a beach front vibe and some top special effects, it's a fun promo for the stylish indie-poppers. 
The VFX were done using integrated green capes for the close ups, and regular post to create the distinctive Where's Waldo style effect of the wideshots. 

http://www.youtube.com/watchv=sKyK1Mme9Sc&amp;feature=youtu.be

Jul &amp; M

Wanda Productions

Celine Roubaud

Marc Marborough

FIRM

Two Door Cinema Club 'Sun' by Jul & Mat

Two-Door-Cinema-Club-'Sun'-by-Jul-&-Mat

The story of a young man obsessively holding on to his childhood dreams of being an astronaut is the basis of this charming video for Yellow Son's The King Or The Bird directed by Jonathan Cohen.
Full of both artfully homemade gear - like the centrifuge made from a desk chair - and authentic stuff, like a cosmonaut's outfit, our hero also manages to engage his flatmates in his enthusiasm, and get them involved in the build-up to the big launch...
The cast includes Jean-Nicolas Arnoux as the aspiring spaceman, and dancer/comedian Charlotte Bentz. "The cosmonaut's costume has been lent to us by the CNES (thanks!) and Dominique Perrault in person (BNF's architect) gave us his copyright to shoot the French National Library's esplanade," reveals says Nicolas de Rosanbo of Chez Eddy.

ChezEddy

Joël Ravon

Victor Seguin

Suzanne Barbaud

Elsa Cohen

Manuel Coutant

CNES, N

Yellow Son 'The King or the Bird' by Jonathan Cohen

Yellow-Son-'The-King-or-the-Bird'-by-Jonathan-Cohen

A bunch of clowns get up to mischief on the end of Brighton Pier, in Luke McCarthy's enjoyable vid for local band Echo Rain's A Million Little Pieces. 
Echo Rain entered a competition called <a href="http://www.rockthehouse2012.com/about.html" target="_blank">Rock The House</a>, and won a runners up prize: to have a music video made for them by Luke. And he does an excellent job turning them into a bunch of fun-loving naughty rascals as they work through the amusements... 
"This event was sponsored by the MVPA who commissioned me to make the video for them," says Luke. "Rock The House is a competition set up by MP Mike Weatherley who held the live event at the Houses of Parliment last year and will be running it again this year."

Luke McCarthy

Brian Greenway

Stella Rae

Ellie Worthington

Echo Rain 'A Million Little Pieces' by Luke McCarthy

Echo-Rain-'A-Million-Little-Pieces'-by-Luke-McCarthy

The team that pioneered the interactive music video are back together: Vincent Morisset has created the video for Arcade Fire's Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) which comes in a traditional sit-and-watch version, and as a 'dance-activated' film. 
Firstly, as you'd expect the setting reflects the visual iconography of Arcade Fire's The Suburbs. Then, as Vincent explains on his <a href="http://www.aatoaa.com/#s2" target="_blank">blog</a>, all you need to interact with the video is to have a webcam (although you can also interact via your mouse). 
"The idea is to affect the pacing of the film with your movements," he says. "You are invited to dance in front of your webcam. There is no specific rules, no complicated "minority report" tricks. Just an invitation to move your arms or your butt on the music. The quicker you move, the faster the frames play. You slow down, the caracters in the video slow down. You freeze and the video starts to loop on the beat, creating a new choreography in the choreography."

Vincent Morisset

Dana Gingras

Christophe Collette

Stéphane Lafleur

Caroline Robert

Régine Chassagne, Karine Denault, Gabrielle Desgagnés, Noémie Dufour

production

Arcade Fire 'Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)' by Vincent Morisset

Arcade-Fire-'Sprawl-II-(Mountains-Beyond-Mountains)'-by-Vincent-Morisset

James Blake&#39;s cover of Joni Mitchell&#39;s classic A Case Of You gets an intense essay on a relationship - and the many different shades of the female protagonist - starring the luminous and compelling Rebecca Hall.&quot;This was an important video for James,&quot; says Seb, &quot;Joni Mitchell went to one of his gigs at the Troubadour in LA and when they met backstage she gave his cover her blessing. A rare compliment apparently. Out of respect for her we both felt that the film should capture the honesty and emotional depth of the song.&quot;There&#39;s a purity to James&#39; cover, so I wanted to do something simple and stripped back. One room, one actress and effectively one shot. It is basically a random collection of memories that are joined together to create a single experience. I wanted to be able to see the lighting and emotional transitions happen in-camera rather than cutting from one scene to the next, so it was quite challenging to shoot in a day.&quot;In many ways it&#39;s a mixture of theatre and cinema, so Rebecca Hall seemed to be the perfect choice given her background in both disciplines. She&#39;s an amazing actress and I knew that she would be able to create a complex and compelling character. A nod to Joni Mitchell herself.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;

Academy Films

Seb Edwards

Dom Thomas

Medb Riordan

Nick Shuttleworth

Stuart Graham

Julian Perrin

Robin Brown

Rebecca Hale

Louise Hinton

Sam Rice

Ludo Fealy

Dan Fo

James Blake 'A Case Of You' by Seb Edwards

Wizard-Sleeve’s-Get-Down-Tonight-by-Thomas-Goldser

James-Blake-'A-Case-Of-You'-by-Seb-Edwards

Jean-Philippe Blunt and Thom Humphreys are long-time friends of the up-and-coming Flashguns and now, fresh out of film school - and with the imminent release of the band's debut album - they have created a splendid video for Passions Of A Different Kind: a bracingly visceral jaunt around wintry Exmoor, with a couple of appropriately large hounds. 
Flashguns recorded their eponymous debut album in a dilapidated barn in the bleak winter of rural Somerset. "The landscape played a large part in the recording of the album so we wanted to mirror this with the video - it's very much a character in itself," says Jean-Philippe. "Filming took place over three days in the barren depths of Exmoor National Park. Huddled in a Landrover and armed with both a Canon 5D and a Canon 550D, Exmoor was our oyster. Two cameras allowed for simultaneous shooting, one capturing 25p while the other 50p. 
"There is meaning lurking somewhere, and in keeping with a long cinematic tradition of meat as metaphor, perhaps it is for the audience to decide."

Flashguns' Passions of a Different Kind by Jean-Philippe Blunt and Thom Humphreys

Flashguns'-Passions-of-a-Different-Kind-by-Jean-Philippe-Blunt-and-Thom-Humphreys

Zoo Kid is just 16 and precocious enough to be releasing his first single, Out Getting Ribs, on indie label House Anxiety. He also has a lovely quiff that's a lot more indie than La Roux's.

Pegah Farahmand

Posy Dixon

Hamish Doyne Ditmas

Craig Porter

Niall Kenny

Shiny

Glassworks

Ben Rogers

Zoo Kid’s Out Getting Ribs by Pegah Farahmand 

Zoo-Kid’s-Out-Getting-Ribs-by-Pegah-Farahmand-

Made way back last summer but held over until now, here's the gorgeous mini-teaser campaign and main viral for the debut Fenech-Soler album by highly talented newcomers Tell No One.
Featuring death and destruction, and a sexy man-bull for the ladies...

Chris Massey

Skin Flicks

Jessica Bernard

Penny Dar

Fenech-Soler's Minotaur by Tell No One

Fenech-Soler's-Minotaur-by-Tell-No-One

With the IKEA-sponsored version of Jona Lewie's <a href="http://www.promonews.tv/2010/10/22/jona-lewie-man-like-me-and-ikea%E2%80%99s-you%E2%80%99ll-always-find-me-in-the-kitchen-at-parties-by-kim-gehrig/" target="_blank">Always In The Kitchen At Parties</a> turning up on Best Ads of the Year lists everywhere, here's Kim Gehrig latest crowd-pleaser, skirting the border brilliantly between ad and vid. 
This 90 sec viral for the new Nokia music app that allows users to record their own, instantly shareable music, by looping and recording various sounds with their Nokia N8. That means recording anything - including cute yapping dogs that happen to be visiting a doggie beauty parlour in Shanghai. 
It's beautifully done - Ross McLennan shot it, Tom Lindsay supplied the razor-sharp edit, MPC recreate the graphics from the app and composite them to the footage - and surely going to be huge.

Kim Gehrig

Juliet Pearson/ Lucie Georgeson

Lizie Gower/James Cunningham

Ross McLennan

Tom Lindsay

Wieden + Kennedy London

Nokia N8's Poodle Loop by Kim Gehrig

A spectacular, beautifully-engineered unveiling of the timeless Moroccan city of Fez (it&#39;s the largest medieval city in the world, apparently) in Alex Courtes latest video for Bono and co.Veteran UK art direction/sfx team Einstein&#39;s Octopus and Paris post house Mikros Image supervised the unveiling in U2&#39;s second Moorish-themed video, following Stephane Sednaoui&#39;s belly-dancing, wobbly-vision vid for <a href="https://vimeo.com/42347030" target="_blank">Mysterious Ways</a>&nbsp;all those years ago. The result is uplifting.

Partizan Darkroom

Alex Courtès

Malachy McAnenny

Omer Ganai

Delphine de Casanove

Tom Lindsey

Simone Grattarola

Mikros Image, Paris

Sharon Blankson

Tom Bird

U2’s Magnificent by Alex Courtes

U2 - Magnificent

So the Olympics is over, and the Zhang Yimou-directed closing ceremony was nearly as awesome as the Zhang Yimou-directed opening ceremony.But did either have fireworks blowing out of a motorcyclist Excuse me, I don&#39;t think so.That&#39;s not the only thing that Jeremie Rozan and Martial Schmeltz&#39;s video for Aussie outfit Midnight Juggernauts&#39; groovy Into The Galaxy has over Beijing. How about those extraordinary Pyrenées walls of rock. They may even be real.You get a great sense of the location because it&#39;s effectively the making of a performance video, and a video, in one.So exploding motorbike riders for 2012 then. Anyone got any other good ideas

Rozan &amp; Schmeltz

Olivier Bassuet

Laurent Tangy

Julien Desplanques

Midnight Juggernauts’ Into The Galaxy by Rozan & Schmeltz

Corin Hardy recreates a Soviet space mission in a tricky one-shot with Feeling singer Dan Gillespie Sells donning the cosmonaut's helmet and doing a good impression of crapping himself. 
Shot by Denzil Armour-Brown, with production design by Ben (The Butcher) Ansell, it's looking good, Vladivostok.

Corin Hardy

Noreen Khan

Denzil Armour Brown

Ben Ansell

Darren Baldwin

The Feeling's Without You by Corin Hardy 

If you haven't yet seen the second interactive video supporting Neon Bible then you're missing something. 
And not just for the novelty of watching the video against a drums-only version of the song. The interactive part, where you can remove and reinstate different audio tracks, is not really an intrinsic part of the experience.
But Olivier Groulx and Tracy Maurice's video have recreated that feel of early Surrealist cinema quite marvellously. 

But what does it all mean Well, Olivier and Tracy directed us towards an extraordinary shot-by-shot interpretation of the video's symbolism by science fiction writer <a href="http://www.danielbrenton.com/" _blank="">Daniel Brenton</a>. 
And although it is no longer up on his website, Mr Brenton has kindly permitted PromoNews to re-publish his amazing analysis of Black Mirror. So for your enlightenment, here it is:
The "Black Mirror" School of Enlightenment by Daniel Brenton
It is extremely rare that I find myself compelled by a piece of popular music -- as well as the accompanying video -- but in the case of "Black Mirror" by the Canadian band <a href="http://www.arcadefire.com/" _blank="">Arcade Fire</a>, I have.
And, to my surprise, this video has a level of spiritual meaning which to me was totally unexpected.

The dancy, string and synthesizer-flavored alternative rock tune, is a perfect match for the video crafted for it, a song-length but otherwise silent film that hearkens back to the Surrealist films of the early twentieth century. Though, fortunately, "Black Mirror" lacks moments, such as in Bunuel and Dali's "The Andalusian Dog," that shock or revolt. It does, however, perplex.
Back in my late teens, I was pretty fussy about the music I listened to, and I suppose I still am, because I hardly listen to any. Most rock sounded pretty much the same to me, but a few bands really stood out. I went through a period of really enjoying (yes, this dates me) The Moody Blues and Pink Floyd, and then "graduated" to Yes, Peter Gabriel's Genesis, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and King Crimson.
Frequently the ambitious music of the latter groups would actually capture me, and I would find it utterly compelling. I was not the kind of person to have on music in the background - it had to seize me sufficiently that I would give it my full attention and listen to the intricacies of it.
I found myself wondering why "Black Mirror" was particularly compelling to me, and I finally put my finger on it.
<table width="260" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" align="right"><tr><td style="width: 10px"/>
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<table width="250" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="4" border="2"><td style="width: 250px">Daniel Brenton is the co-author of Red Moon, a science fiction thriller about a 2019 mission to the Moon that spins wildly out of control -- along with the fate of the world -- when a spacecraft found after half a century reveals the darkest secret of the Moon Race. Learn more about it at his site <a href="http://www.luna15.com/" _blank="">Luna 15</a>.
He also blogs (sporadically) at <a href="http://www.danielbrenton.com/" _blank="">The Odd Little Universe of Daniel Brenton</a>.</td>
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<td style="width: 250px; height: 10px"/>
</tr></table>Beyond the urgent, almost nervous, driving beat of the music, what has caught me more than anything else is the imagery of the video. Beyond effectively capturing the tone of the silent art films of the early 1900s, little moments jump out - the first shot of a ship in the distance with smoke curling from her forward stack in roughly the shape of a question mark, the enormous head floating like an iceberg in the sea, the protagonist finding himself in a lifeboat, and then swimming toward the floating head and then presumably finding himself inside of it, like Jonah inside the great fish. This is imagery that disorients, but also plays on deeply held myths and symbols.
I think this imagery is, in a sense, an old friend to me personally. In my late teen years in high school and college, I became openly contemptuous of my Christian upbringing for the obvious reasons, but mostly because it justified the actions of hypocrites. Still, the need to find meaning in my life drove me, and I began to look elsewhere. I skirted the edges of the Art crowd during those years, and being in the Bay Area, I was exposed to the real Art scene in San Francisco.
Most of the contemporary work I spent any time with struck me as lacking craftsmanship and meaning - and smelled more like the work of cultural con artists - but work of the Surrealists caught my attention.
What this work did for me, I think, is open me to thinking differently, to begin understanding the power of symbols, and in turn to using the experience of interacting with the puzzle of artistic works as a kind of personal Rorschach Test. These could cut through my intellect to stir deeper parts of me that, here and there, would strike on some symbol that had personal meaning.
Oddly - or perhaps, not oddly - a "black mirror" is a tool used in magick for "scrying," which is, as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrying" _blank="">Wikipedia</a> tells us, "a magic practice that involves seeing things supernaturally in a medium, usually for purposes of divination or fortune-telling."
In my mind, this sounds like a practice devised to help an individual access his or her intuitive faculties.
In a flash, I realized what this video was about.
Now, I'm a writer. I deal with words, symbols, feelings, and the ways these can be used to create different responses. So what I see here may not be the "real" answer, if there is such a thing, but it is an answer that suits me. I would like to suggest that it is entirely possible that this video was created without any conscious recognition of any underlying message. (You can't tell me this kind of thing doesn't happen. The unconscious mind is a powerful thing.)
I'd like to note that I am ignoring the lyrics, which I feel are written to generate an ambiance of prophetic doom which, it seems clear to me, the video is not about.
<ul><li>The video opens with a steamship at sea, and we see the question mark over the smokestack. The ship is, of course, alone in the vast expanse, which represents the endless enigma of our existence, protecting those on board from having to experience it.</li>
<li>Someone approaches a porthole of the ship (probably our protagonist that we meet shortly), and through it can see an enormous head, iceberg-like, rise from the sea. This may represent the awakening of self-awareness.</li>
<li>We see a bottle roll across the floor of the ship, filled with a glowing liquid. This is Atman, the divine spark, which can only be discovered after self-awareness occurs. The Atman leads to Brahman, the Godhead, like a stream leads to the ocean.
</li>
<li>Our protagonist apparently awakens in a lifeboat, presumably the survivor of the ship having sunk. His fellow survivor in the lifeboat, oddly, has a head that is actually a television set, which shows an outline of a person shrinking in size, or possibly into the distance. Our protagonist is carrying the bottle with the glowing substance in a satchel over his chest protectively, and he looks at it, and realizes it has an over sized label showing the same outline of a person shrinking as the television head is showing him. The survivors in nearby lifeboats see that he has this bottle, and glare at him threateningly. Seeing this, the protagonist jumps out of the boat and starts swimming, as it turns out, toward the giant head.
I am interpreting the survivor with the television head as a teacher (in the spiritual sense), and the image he/she is showing of of the outline of a person shrinking as an illustration of a connection between the giant head (which is most likely attached to something, probably a body to make it a god-like giant) and a normally-sized person. The protagonist realizes the connection between normal humans and the giant head is that Brahman must be within it, and that he must go there. When the other survivors see our protagonist has this bottle of glowing substance, the divine spark, and has understood the giant head is where they all need to go, they are hostile because, despite being lost in the enigma of their existence, they don't want to see anything that would threaten them as they are.</li>
<li>Our protagonist swims to the giant head, and presumably is swallowed by it.</li>
<li>He finds himself in a dark cavern-like area, presumably inside the giant head. With the bottle as his only light, he begins to explore.</li>
<li>He discovers he is surrounded by a number of odd creatures with three-sided pyramids for bodies and sinister faces embedded in their sides. Wielding two-pronged pitchforks, they goad him on to a conveyor belt, and he begins to slide helplessly deeper into the cavern.
I don't think it's too much of a stretch to suggest these strange creatures are either demons set to destroy him - but fail to do so, as we see in a moment -- or to "try" him by challenges to test his worthiness to find Brahman.</li>
<li>Our protagonist slides down the conveyor until it ends, and, seeing he is unhurt, turns and is drawn by something he sees deeper in the cavern.</li>
<li>He finds a well or pool filled with glowing liquid, not unlike the substance in the bottle he has been carrying. This is Brahman. As he beholds Brahman, we see the dancers, first in black hooded tights, and then in white versions of the same clothing, set against a black background.
We no longer see the protagonist, so I am interpreting this that he has merged with Brahman, and has become the dance, the divine play of existence and non-existence. Fittingly, we end with a shot of the television screen, a reminder of the message to hold on to Atman and seek Brahman.</li>
</ul>So there you have it - Hinduism and alternative rock. Timeless wisdom in a music video.
Who'd a thunk it
I suspect there may be some who would think my reading any meaning into this is utterly ridiculous. To those individuals I say: which is more ridiculous - me writing it, or you reading it all the way to the end
© 2008, by Daniel Brenton. All Rights Reserved.

1976 Productions Montreal 

Olivier Groulx and Tracy Maurice

Nicolas Comeau

Hinduism and alternative rock: a novelist's interpretation of Arcade Fire's Black Mirror 

Hinduism-and-alternative-rock:-a-novelist's-interpretation-of-Arcade-Fire's-Black-Mirror-

Promonews Podcast

Jean

Director of Photography

Videos featuring Jean

2012 (4)

2011 (4)

2010 (1)

2009 (1)

2008 (3)

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