Electric Cinema

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The Golden Age

The last installment of Woodkid’s music video tetralogy, brings us to the roots of where the saga all started. Being almost completely stripped down from visual effects (with the exception of the very ostentatious beginning),  the promo focuses on a series of emotional memories that mark the protagonist and set the grounds for the future episodes of this fantastic adventure.

Director Yoann Lemoine nicely put together a photo collage highlighting the ways the elements connect between “The Golden Age” and the other three videos of the series.

Here is what Lemoine had to say about the concept of the music video. (via VideoStatic)

“The Golden Age is the last single and video for my first album.

Throughout the process of directing videos for this story, I slowly removed all digital and post-production layers of my work to finally create this piece. It is somehow a postcard from my childhood, with memories and emotions from the countryside assembled together in a long, free, mellow piece. It’s about the child trapped inside, the haunting memories, the beautiful and the dark ones. I wanted the camera work and acting direction to be very organic and carnal, in opposition to the digital, rigid and super-composed aspects of the previous videos. That’s why we decided to shoot everything handheld, without any mechanical movement and with no post-production. In that way, I would say this video is very different from the other ones.

It all started when I bought an original print by my favorite photographer, William Gedney, friend and contemporary of Lee and Maria Friedlander, who shot families in rural America in the sixties. I decided that this piece would pay tribute to the beauty of his work and the way he shoots boys and men in their environment, to the sensuality of his eye, which describes so well what I felt for other boys when I was younger.

In order to extend the song and create the right mood for this piece, I collaborated with composer Max Richter. He extended and re-recorded his piece ‘Embers’ to adapt it to the pace and tonality of ‘The Golden Age.’ Together, we created this very free ‘hybrid’ edit of the track, which tells so much about the pace of never ending childhood summers.

In a way, this piece is a final goodbye to four years of work and tour for this album.“