This Michel Gondry music video of Chemical Brothers’ song “Let Forever Be” is surreal and as close to Busby Berkley as you’re going to get. My two fave parts: When she’s at the jewelry counter, sensing another dancing attack coming on, she looks up with a “Uh, oh — not again!!” expression. The other: her climbing up the escalator only to have it turn into a dancing pyramid!)
(Update: Here’s Gondry talking about how he made this video).
See also: Massive Attack’s Protection (another Gondry vid with no trick photography), Daft Punk’s Around the World (which I actually talked about in a video lecture on music videos in Ukraine!), Bjork’s Human Behavior (Gondry made Bjork famous with this video!) and Kylie Minogue’s Come into my World (lots of kaleidoscopic visual effects, like Gondry did in the Let Forever Be video).
Other vids: Chris Appelbaum’s great music video Closing Time of the Semisonic song. I love how the two panel view creates an overlapping, 3 dimensional world. Lots of visual tricks–pay no attention to the 2 bicycles! They are different bicycles!
One common theme to Gondry’s vids (and Appelbaum’s) is creating the illusion of a single tracking shot using trick photography and computer effects.
See also: a collection of famous long takes in cinema, as youtube videos. I haven’t watched all of them, but the one for Boogie Nights was the most entertaining and less self-conscious.
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