Pitchfork’s newest video stars Belgian musician Stromae, who offers behind-the-scenes insights and particulars as he breaks down a few of his hottest music movies.
Stromae’s movies, that are usually made in collaboration along with his brother, the creative director Luc Van Haver, usually eschew easy simplicity in favor of elaborately layered ideas. On “Papaoutai,” a observe about absent fathers, merely not casting a father was, as he says, “too apparent, too simple.” As an alternative, Stromae himself posed as a model within the video, working with French choreographer Marion Motin to create a sequence of unbelievable sequences the place, as a toddler dances with the Stromae-mannequin, “we don’t even know if it’s a dream.”
Even a deceptively “actually easy” video like “L’Enfer” required filming take after take to nail the gradual zoom. (As Stromae notes, he additionally wore an Ariana Grande-style ponytail for the shoot, which required some artistic styling.) In the meantime, the celebratory “Santé” used actual folks executing Motin’s choreography as a substitute of dancers— “it’s humorous to see how pure they had been and the way a lot they gave for the video clip,” Stromae mentioned—whereas Multitude’s “Fils De Joie” used particular results to faux actual folks.
Beneath, watch the video to study extra about Stromae’s artistic course of.
