animation

Take a first look at "Rapper's Delight" by Groove Century (originally performed by The Sugarhill Gang) coming into Just Dance 2024 Edition.

The charismatic LA-born musician Charles X teamed up with our very own in-house director, Quentin Baillieux (one half of the Parallelduo) for his eagerly anticipated new single entitled Can You Do It, this intricately crafted mixed 3D/2D animation music video produced by Eddy and animated at Brunch Studio.
Quentin beautifully merges the typically highbrow sport of horse racing with the commonly misrepresented “mean streets” of Pacoima, the proud birthplace of Charles X, to challenge any stereotypes or preconceptions of race and social class which may exist in modern day society.

The French band Louise Attaque (Gaëtan Roussel, Robin Feix, etc.) broke up in 2006 after releasing the album “A plus tard Crocodiles”, which won the French Music Award in the pop/rock category. Useless to say that the release of the “Greatest hits” album called “Du monde autour” on October 24th is quite an event, with its two new songs.

It is an opportunity for the director Louis Clichy (animator on “Wall-e”, “Up” and “Ratatouille”, produced by Pixar) to sign a great music video with a very rough, rhythmic and sensitive style that fits the band’s energy perfectly. It is also his first music video as a director: what an event indeed! Louis Clichy, who is currently working on a very ambitious feature film (Asterix in 3D, co-directed with Alexandre Astier), offers himself a very creative blast: he loved the exercise. ChezEddy produced the video in only 22 days. Besides, animated sequences were created and shown at the mythic Ferber Studio in Paris and on the “Taratata” TV show.

The emblematic character of Louis Attaque, created by the bass player Robin Feix, is the video’s heroine. She pretty much suits what Louis Clichy likes to do: black and white, line drawing. “I’m rather close to that kind of style, the character is easy to draw, and offers real freedom. Actually, what mattered to me when I listened to the music was to find out if I could do something with it. The rhythm was important. The rhythm and, by extension, the music totally match the animation. Technically, it’s a quite simple film to make, pretty rough, very inspired. It is very pleasant to do, there is a lot of free tone”.

Along with the video, ChezEddy signed the animations in the collector DVD set “Du monde tout autour” that will accompany the forthcoming release of the music video.

Maxime Bruneel directs a 9-minute musical short film with a famous song by Serge Gainsbourg, Variations sur Marilou, interpreted in 2006 by Alain Bashung.
The lyrics are based on false repetitions. The same sentences regularly come back, slightly modified. Maxime Bruneel built his music video on the same scheme, with a certain number of extended shots to create variations. The unusual length of the song and its slow and repetitive rhythm claim a strong principle of mise-en-scene. Maxime chose to create 74 animated shots and transfered them to an editor as he would normally do for a live-action music video. The main constraint would have been do the whole project without any precise preview of the music video's cut, without any complete raw cut. The music video thus keeps a spontaneous side with unexpected and cyclic transitions in the repetitiveness.
The song rests between reality and fantasy. The music video explores this aspect by showing Marilou's gestures, parallel to the imaginary world of desire, all at once. It thus responds to the very daring worlds of Bashung and Gainsbourg. Maxime Bruneel's challenge was to achieve to show this image without it being shocking or bandied about. We are closer to Courbet's "Origine du monde" than today's pornographic films.
History reminder :
In 2006, Alain Bashung records his version of "L'Homme à la Tête de Chou", the mythical and totally uncharacteristic album recorded in 1976 by Serge Gainsbourg. In this version, recorded for the musical created and directed by choreographer Jean-Claude Gallotta in 2009, Bashung performs, as only he could do it, this 12-song poetic masterpiece, written by the grand Gainsbar. With his inimitable phrasing, his warm and sensual voice, Bashung imposes his silences, draws the contours of poetic and urban images, always surprisingly modern and exact, with this rock and classy elegance that qualifies him.