The Hardest Button to Button largely represents the apex of Michel Gondry’s Music video career. While Fell in Love With a Girl may have made him, and the White Stripes, famous, this video represents an expert at the height of his game. Simplicity. Confidence. Signature moves. It’s all there. Gondry has recently begun the move from music video mastermind to feature film director (we’ve seen two films out of Gondry since this video was released) and while I expect fantastic things from any continued music video involvement, never again will he be as immersed in the form as he was when The Hardest Button to Button was released in 2003.

To understand The Hardest Button to Button we must understand just what music and a music video mean in a concrete sense. The sounds we hear are aural representations of physical events. A stick hits a drum. Pound. A taught string is plucked. Howl. The sounds leave a lasting impression on the mind of the listener but there is not visual manifestation. After an intense drum solo, we’re left with the same drum set. A guitar wails over the chorus, but the guitar remains. Our eyes are not assaulted to the same degree as our ears. Creating a bridge between these two senses, and successfully crossing it, is the fundamental tenet of the music video art form. It’s the challenge all music video directors grapple with.

Gondry’s response to the challenge in this particular case was to completely and utterly cheat. Gondry quite literally makes sound into a visual and altogether less temporal event. The high-concept is one of a “visual echo” where the eye is stimulated in accord with the ear. Each sound event is represented by the instrument that created it. A drum beat leaves behind a kick drum. A guitar lick leaves behind an amp. Sound is no longer invisible and no longer ephemeral: In order to hear a sound the physical world must reflect upon it. Noise pollution takes on a whole new meaning.

Michel Gondry (right), on the set of his feature film “The Science of Sleep”.

Upon hearing the song, Gondry immediately had a strong vision and concept.

When I heard the song, it was so incredible, I knew I had to do the video. It’s the shape of the song that gave me the idea. The pattern, how it goes ‘doot-doot-doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot.’ This makes me think of 1, 2, 3, 4 … 4, 8, 12, 16 … 2, 4, 8, 16, 32.

This vision faced opposition, however, from Jack White himself. White wanted to go a different direction as they had just completed a performance driven video for Seven Nation Army. In addition, his hand was broken in a car accident and he would have to wear a cast as he pretended to play in the video. Somehow Gondry managed to convince White of the strength of his concept despite those obstacles and despite the fact that actually shooting the video would be no easy feat. Realizing the video’s conceptual goal would require simple brute force shooting and editing. The replication required to create the “visual echo” would necessitate 32 identical Ludwig drum kits, 32 amplifiers, and 16 microphone stands. Jack and Meg would stand in front of the lead set, record, and then a new set would be peeled of the back of the trail and brought to the front. The video was shot entirely in the daylight in Harlem/Riverside park, requiring three 16-hour day shoots. While the video has a stop-motion quality, it was actually recorded in traditional live-action and then chopped up into the small, individual components during editing. The end result is a resounding success and Gondry’s vision of a truly visual echo is expertly realized.

As the video progresses, the rigidity of the conceit begins to waver as Gondry becomes more playful. His original treatment reveals a desire to work towards the manipulation of geometric representation rather than following the simple accumulation of physical sound concept. This dynamic represents a shift from a manipulation of space to a manipulation of time. Rather than a strict 1:1 ratio of sound:object we begin to see sound manipulating existing physical representations. The rotating drum carousel in the field and the pulsating seen in the subway scene are evidence of this. In the latter case Gondry seems to be stating that sound is not bound by time and that music has the ability to alter the contents of time, but never does he deviate from the central idea that music MUST cause physical change.

The point is made in the final spiral shot in the tunnel where the physical trail of new sounds must maneuver around the old. The space becomes cramped and saturated. Fitting too many sounds into the same physical space over the same time span can physical clutter in Gondry’s world. A classical symphony or a bad techno song could quickly overwhelm a point in space-time… such dense sounds would presumably require effective space management: a game of sound Tetris™ if you will. With the White Stripes, the problem is somewhat the opposite in that they strive to create something powerful with minimal instrumentation. How do you do it? By being clever.

(Trivia: the guy in the white suit in the video is Beck.)

White Stripes – The Hardest Button to Button, directed by Michel Gondry.

Via V2 Music.

Via SRO (iPod Compatible: 41.5 MB)

This video and other works by Michel Gondry can be found on Director’s Series Vol. 3 – Work of Director Michel Gondry. Go buy it.

Sources and additional info on this video: Directors-File and MTV.

Finally, see the Simpsons spoof this video here.