Face to Face with... Jonas & Francois

Jonas & Francois are a French directing duo best known for their slick promos for artists including Kanye West, Depeche Mode and Justice. Their commercials through Saatchi & Saatchi and Riff Raff Films for the current Toyota Yaris campaign merge live action and animation in a music video style. Here, the guys tell us about the inspiration behind the Gadget Guy spot (above), The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and their love for The Rolling Stones.

Saatchi & Saatchi picked you to direct the Toyota Yaris spots because of your track record in music videos, is that correct?

Rob [Potts, copywriter] and Andy [Jex, art director] at Saatchi & Saatchi came to us with a script that looked more like a brief from a record company for a clip rather than a traditional [commercial] job. In fact, the script consisted of the words for a kind of hip-hop track for each film. In most things we do music is so important and becomes the thing we create everything around.

With this script Rob and Andy were very supportive and collaborative in the whole process of building each different part, though we did have one rule: the words told the story and we didn’t want to change them. For everything else, we were able to use our own style of music video.

Where did the ideas come from in terms of what you brought to the project?

We wanted to create these characters as if they were ‘genies’ brought to life, using old-school animations as references and making them feel like old-school rapper ‘toons. Like the Beastie Boys rapping on an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, with the verve and attitude of Mars Blackmon (the character created by Spike Lee).

We’ve always had a fascination with the effects you can add in post production but we prefer that the things we do aren’t overtly shouting post production. We like them to blend more into the work, feeling like invisible and realistic effects. Let's say we prefer the effects in The Abyss to Transformers and the rougher visual tricks of the first Star Wars films compared to the latest.

So we wanted to twist the performance of our rappers providing animation in contrast to the reality of the scenes. By using rough rendering to clearly show that these scenes were animated the point was to use these as visual metaphors for the supremacy of the Toyota Yaris compared to other cars. We also wanted it to be fun and unconventional using fluid characters that were agile and serious in the substance of what they were saying. Everything is just like the Yaris: fun, agile, cute, but smart.

Did you see the campaign as an ideal way to show what else you can do, or are you happy to be known as music video directors?

We like to be considered as directors first and foremost. We love all that is in a performance, pushing the surreal, creative exaggeration, but then sometimes just being purely visual.

Did you approach the project differently from how you would a promo? What are the main differences between working on commercials and music videos?

Not really, you approach every project in the same way. The important thing is to explore the concept and visual approach and get the best film done. Obviously there are differences in time and money but we always want to make the best thing.

In commercials there are more people involved but working on this with Andy and Rob, they were so collaborative and trusting we think it showed the idea and end result are what matters and you work to make sure the commercials turn out like that.

What kind of challenges did you encounter on the Gadget Guy shoot?

We originally thought we could find our cast in Spain, but it proved very difficult so we had to revert to casting in London. It also helps because we needed to convey the nuances of each film to the actors and dancers and how we would animate them after the shoot. They needed to be able to be very visual, exaggerated, almost like mime artists! When we were casting in Spain and trying to get our direction translated it always came out another way!

The spot mixes live action, a puppet, animation, jokes (like the pasta maker) and serious messages about the car. Is it hard to keep the story focused with so many different creative devices at play?

We agreed with Rob and Andy from the start that the script wouldn’t change no matter what. We were very aware that with everything else going on it would be easy to lose the actual message. However, the mix of styles catches the eye from start to finish. The films are very rich in terms of image and sound, but there is certain simplicity, especially when we come to the pay off, “but can you do this?” But before that we wanted to be playful, smart, and refreshing. Again, we think it fits well with the Toyota Yaris.

Is the main character based on a real person?

We wanted to use a cartoon character but with a wealth of expressions and attitude, realistic movements and perfect lip sync so you believe and immerse yourselves in his performance and think he’s a real person. For this we used a technique called rotoscoping, where animators trace over live-action film movement, frame by frame or every two frames. We used a lot of morphing to interpolate the movement and increase the realism.

The main person in Gadget Guy is based on the performance of a dancer/actor who brought the whole film to life. In fact we cast everyone to have a specific attitude, dancing capabilities or facial manners and acting skills so that each film and character had something to give us in the overall feeling of each film.

The idea was both to keep their facial expressions and performance, while turning them into cartoon characters with the talented team of designers and animators at Mathematic, which gave them life.

If you could direct a music video for any artist you haven’t worked with before, dead or alive, who would you choose and why?

The Rolling Stones. And we would shoot them now, not when they were young. They have character and life.