 |
  |
Daft Punk
The Cartoon Version
Paris
04/08/2003 -
Daft Punk exploded onto the French electro scene in 1997 with their debut album, Homework. This turned out to be a phenomenal best-seller and the duo, who earned a reputation for appearing at their gigs dressed in masks, were soon faced with making a worthy follow-up. It was not long before ideas for their second album, Discovery, evolved from a simple music project to a radical new sound-and-vision concept. "When we started work on 'Discovery'," say the duo, "we wanted to get a new perspective on things, you know, find a different sort of narrative thread to tie things together. What happened was Spike Jonze* (director of the film Being John Malkovitch) did the video for our single 'Da Funk' and we went on to film the follow-up to that ourselves. That's basically where we got the idea of doing a sort of 'narrative album' where the videos to the different tracks would follow on from one another and be like a film. We tried to plan the thing as a sort of 'rock opera', writing the scenario at the same time as the music. As the music marked a return to the imaginary world of childhood it was good to structure things around a story because that allowed us to push things further on a musical front."
The idea of splicing music and film adventures together is not a new one, of course. The Beatles mixed pop hits and cartoon animation in Yellow Submarine and then there was Pink Floyd's The Wall, The Who's filmic rock opera Tommy and Disney's Fantasia. Daft Punk's own venture, Interstella 5555, may opt for a futuristic manga genre, but at its core the duo's film is deliberately retro, harking back to the golden age of the French 80s when children's TV presenter Dorothée introduced the nation to Japanese cartoons. Parents hated them but they struck an immediate chord with kids, cartoons such as Albator (Captain Harlock) going on to achieve cult status. And thus it was that, like their peers, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem Christo inked portraits of the famous space pirate onto their school desks. When the concept of creating a cartoon film for Discovery came up the duo automatically jumped on the same idea: why not get in touch with Captain Harlock's creator, Leiji Matsumoto?
Meeting the Manga Master
Once Bangalter and Christo had produced a demo tape for their second album and come up with the basic outline of a film script they jumped on the first plane to Tokyo to meet Matsumoto.. The Japanese manga master was flattered by the French duo's interest in his work and instantly enthusiastic about the project, seeing it as a way of paying tribute to his own childhood idol, Marianne Hold (the heroine of Julien Duvivier's film, Marianne de ma jeunesse). Matsumoto's obsession with Marianne, which has gripped him from the age of 14, is evident in his work where the French heroine's features have reappeared in his own female characters time and time again.
Dressed in full android get-up (to give the Japanese manga master an idea of their space characters!), Daft Punk appeared on Matsumoto's doorstep in Tokyo raring to go. Fired by their enthusiasm - and no doubt inspired by those weird droid get-ups - Matsumoto agreed to work on the duo's project, which is a major step for him as this is the first time in his career that he has worked with a non-Japanese team. "I've always loved music," he says, "and not just classical music, but all kinds of music. Ever since I was a kid I've had this habit of picturing images when I listen to music. So the idea of bringing music and images together is something I've wanted to do for a long, long time. It's like my childhood dream's turned up under my nose and come true!"
Working with Matsumoto is like a dream come true for Daft Punk, too. In fact, the French duo had never envisaged collaborating on the project with the Japanese star. "We hadn't really though of Matsumoto doing the drawings for the film," they say, "We just wanted to get a bit of guidance and advice from him!" Matsumoto has the added bonus of having brought director Kazuhisa Takenouchi on board as well as Toei Animation, the legendary production company behind the success of Goldorak, Les Chevaliers du Zodiaque and many of Akira Kurosawa's films. Daft Punk's project, which involved 28 months' intensive work, a 4-million euro budget and incessant to and fro-ing between Paris and Tokyo ended with the French duo flying out to Japan to supervise the editing and final mix of the film.
Space Opera
"We've come up with a totally new genre," proclaim Bangalter and Christo proudly, vaunting the merits of their "house musical" as a sort of 21st-century version of rock opera. As for the film's scenario, co-written with their childhood friend Cédric Hervet, all we can reveal for now is that the plot revolves around four musicians from another galaxy who have been kidnapped by an evil manager who wants to make them the biggest pop group on the planet. The four musos are trapped in the show-biz system, prey to a gang of ruthless producers, but then our hero (who happens to have fallen madly in love with the group's girl bass-player) flies in to save the day!
Fans are in for 1 hour, 7 minutes of symbiotic sound and image, the film playing out in fourteen "acts" based on the track order of the Discovery album. With little sound input apart from the album and not a word of dialogue, the "house musical" is a testimony to the zany imagination of Daft Punk and the animation mastery of Matsumoto. Daft Punk's DVD should hit stores in November or December of this year and animation fans have more treats in store too. There are rumours that Albator (Captain Harlock) is about to hit cinema screens in a film directed by French cartoon whizzkid Olivier Dahan. So keep your eyes peeled, space pirates!
*whom Bangalter and Christo had thought about asking to direct their own film before it became a manga
Pascal Bagot
Translation : Julie Street
21/12/2010 -
04/07/2006 -
18/03/2005 -
30/10/2001 -
16/03/2001 -
05/01/2001 -
