My Recurring Dream - André Chocron

My Recurring Dream was directed by André Chocron who is a young film director from Norway. For five years he studied at a Norwegian film school, perfecting his trade. When he graduated in 2010 he went straight into making music videos on a very low budget. This music video is an example of having a very low budget, which I think works to his advantage for this. 

My Recurring Dream 

I really like this video I think that it is really different and unique, Chocron has ideas that nobody else has. He has such a great imagination which I think stands out in a lot of his videos and especially this one. I think the song also gives a lot of inspiration because it has it own story which he is able to tell, with his experience. I think the fact that each of his ideas are really simple but so detailed that they look more complicated than they actually are. I think it is important to keep to a simple idea but complicate it with imagination. 

'The narrative is just free imagination, visual ideas I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and stuff I came up with while listening to the song.'

In this video there is a mixture of outside and inside shots. The outside shots are all different including, cars on fire, men skateboarding and a man coming out of a waterfall, while the inside shots are of a swimming pool and hospital both of these places being very public. Andre Chocron used each of these locations which would have taken time and effort to get all the shots and being able to use these facilities. I think it is great that he has filmed everything on location because it gives it more of a real feel that turns out really well because the effort to find all of these locations were made.

 "I'm not very fond of green screens, at least not when it’s just an easy way out."

Along with the title of the video 'My Recurring Dream' there is also some recurring themes in this video. In the scene in the train a woman is wearing a yellow dress and as she turns around the transitions fade out. A couple of scenes later a young girl is turning back around running away wearing the same dress. This is because in the previous shot with the older woman she is being trapped therefore the younger girl running away from it. Along with the recurring theme of the dresses there is also a recurring theme with the colours at the beginning of the video. In the music video the colour theme is very light with bright colours but then half way through the colours get darker, this starts with the blue of the swimming pool and then the men riding the skateboard with the purple undertones. I really like the themes that Chocron because it makes the music video so unique from others that have been similar.

There is a lot of transitions, I think my favourite is the T-shirt to the stairs. I like this one because you can tell that it was difficult to put together. I like the way the woman is moving the water with what it looks to be a fishing root and then the man coming up through the water. It's great because it is totally different to any of the other shots. Although they are all great I think this one here just shows how great of an imagination that Andre Chocron truly has. We know this is a difficult production because the image on the t-shirt is a little out of focus. I think that this suggests at how hard this production was to do by showing that a professional can't get it 100% all of the time. I like the little things like this is in productions because it shows no matter how much you know it sometimes wont be able to work because of the complication of the project.

Although the waterfall transition is my favourite I think the train one is very unique. I like this because on the train people are sat in each part of the train, it feels like each of them have their own story. Each individual is either talking to someone else or they are doing something else like reading a newspaper. I like the way this is set out because it feels very real as this is something that would happen in real life, with everyone minding their own business and doing as they please.

I think that this video is very clever and it shows that a lot of work has gone into it. I think the way that each of the transitions are done show that it was hard to do them all in the limited period of time. The band didn't give any money to Andre Chocron and his team therefore all of the money they got came from the Norwegian film fund therefore for very little budget it is a really successful production that a lot of experienced film directors would be proud  of.

"The video wasn’t financed by the band, but by funds our production company was able to get from the Norwegian Film Fund."

I think the words to describe this production are; dreamlike, unique and fantasy. The reason for this is because it is a dream and that is exactly what it feels like.

http://www.onepointfour.co/2013/03/27/emerging-talent-director-andre-chocron/ - 12th May 2014