Premiere: Chapelier Fou – La Guerre Des Nombres (Video)

Chapelier Fou crossed our paths recently when I interviewed him having become intrigued by his aural productions. His name returns to the pages of R$N as we're fortunate enough to premiere the video for his brilliant track 'La Guerre Des Nombres'. Louis Warynski's sounds are combined with some beautiful imagery from director Jean Chauvelot.

You can read the thoughts of Mr Chauvelot, artist Grégory Wagenheim (a regular collaborator with Chapelier Fou) and Chapelier Fou himself below. First, here's 'La Guerre Des Nombres';

Grégory WAGENHEIM

(Visual artist, video maker, contemporary art artist & director from Chapelier Fou's previous music video "Tea Tea Tea". Gregory made all of the Chapelier Fou albums & EPs artworks, except the last album "Deltas" where he only worked on the typography.)

"I presented Louis (Chapelier Fou) and Jean (director) the original idea of a game contest. My first inspiration was "Dangerous Moves / La Diagonale du fou" from Richard Dembo with french actor Michel Piccoli. The movie is about two great chess players' confrontation, the old master versus the "nouvelle garde" young one. The idea was to transpose this with an original game, a more graphical / mathematical / strange one, more "Chapelier Fou" indeed… The game was inspired by the jeu de go and pachisi, and with a very graphical board based on the typographical work I did on the album : diagonals appearing in each letter, and especially the capital D in the album title: Deltas."

"For the opening sequence, the Super 5 team took all the sketches I did for the game, number combinations ("Pi" movie was an inspiration too), etc and put them on the wall. I discovered the big GW letters (ie Greg's initials) in the final version of the music video, and that flattered me, enough so I can pretend to my parents I did it all…"

Jean Chauvelot

"After working on the "Tea Tea Tea" music video, we were invited to work on "La Guerre des Nombres" last spring. We were really surprised when we heard it for the first time, it's completely different to "Tea Tea Tea". The original idea from Greg was the encounter between the two contestants. We at Super 5 wanted to develop a story, with a beginning, a climax and an ending, which was also how the song was structured. As with a lot of Louis' work, the music is really narrative…"

"The five of us (ie at Super 5) were involved in every step, even if we all have our own areas of expertize. For this music video, Romain (cameraman) and I (director) worked on the first ideas. I must admit it was supposed to be a lot more violent, featuring cannibals… Lucie (makeup) who played the main character in the "Tea Tea Tea" music video came up with the idea of a strange society, an esoteric aesthetic and we all agreed it was a good way to go."

"Working with Louis was a lot of fun. We didn't know him well before the Tea Tea Tea music video. For La Guerre des Nombres, we wanted him to be involved from the beginning, of course playing a real character in front of the camera but also  being part of the script, the setting, the editing, etc. Everything was easier having him working with us. We never had to ask or request his advices, he was just there as part of the crew."

Regarding the story behind the music video :  "At one point we came up with the idea of extraterrestrials dominating the world, with this abstract game that was supposed to be known and followed worldwide, having people getting obsessed with it… Of course, without really knowing its hidden agenda. Much like how it is in our consumer society. We had to skip this whole thing, so the final story is more happening in the real world, and with a more esoteric and abstract elements at the same time.

"There's no real winner in this game, but I can tell one character is losing more than the other one…"

Chapelier Fou

"I was asked to join the team to help and work on the script, to give ideas, to help with the editing. It was interesting to discover how these short movies are made. The idea of me acting as the referee was brilliant, I didn't have to do too much in the way of acting, I just had to be completely neutral."

"I loved the idea of the final sequence. This video is all about ambiguity : who wins ? who loses ? And about malice…"

Find out more about Chapelier Fou through his official Facebook page.