Vincent Moon (real name Mathieu Saura, (Montréal, August 25, 1979) [1]) is an independent filmmaker from Paris mainly known for his field work music videos of indie rock related musicians as well as some notable mainstream artists like Tom Jones, R.E.M. or Arcade Fire. Besides making music videos he also makes experimental films and documentaries. His 2009 film, La Faute Des Fleurs about Japanese singer Kazuki Tomokawa won the Sound & Vision Award at the film's world premiere at CPH:DOX - the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival - in November 2009. He has been living on the road since January 2009, experimenting on nomadic cinema and traveling to film rare musicians around the world. He now works alone or with people he finds on the road, and most of the time without money involved in the projects, trying to redefine the limits of cinema in the 21st century. In 2011 he will begin work on his new collection of recordings, Petites Planetes, dedicated to experimentation between images and sounds, shot around the world.
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Chryde, founder of the website La Blogothèque, wanted to shake things up and find another way to share music. He also wanted to film music differently. Chryde offered Moon to go and film musicians in Paris. The so called Take-Away Shows (or the French title Les Concerts à Emporter) have existed since April 2006. The large amount of clips is the result of a very fast filming process with mostly one take recordings in a way comparable to the Dogma 95 concept. Comparable with the field recordings of Alan Lomax or the Peel Sessions of John Peel, Moon has set up a large collection of unique single take recordings enhanced with artistic filmed video footage. The fast filming process he uses is a form of guerrilla film making. The sessions are usually two or three tracks filmed improvised in an unusual environment and as such they often had a rough and ready, demo-like feel, somewhere between a live performance and a finished music video. These live, unusually staged performances differ from the artifice of traditional music videos in favor of single-take, organic and primarily acoustic sessions.[2]
The first Take-Away Show was with The Spinto Band. Under the name The Take-Away Shows Moon made over 120 music video clip sessions, most of the time two or three songs, among with many bands including Bon Iver, Yeasayer, Liars, R.E.M., Arcade Fire, Tom Jones, The Ex, De Kift, Stephen Malkmus, Scout Niblett, Sigur Rós, Caribou, Vic Chesnutt, Architecture in Helsinki, The National, The Shins, Andrew Bird, Okkervil River, Xiu Xiu, Sufjan Stevens, and David Bazan.
Michael Stipe became aware of the works of Moon and as a fan he asked him to make a film project for his band. The result, made with fellow filmmaker Jeremiah, resulted in various experimental projects, for internet and the big screen (SIX DAYS, THIS IS NOT A SHOW...). The project ninetynights.com was a website dedicated to reveal little by little the new R.E.M. album, in the beginning of 2008. Over a period of 90 days, one shot would appear everyday on the website, at first very mysterious and without music, then little by little showing the band members and the songs. Each video was downloadable in high resolution, to let anybody make its own edit. Moon and Jeremiah's edit resulted in SIX DAYS, a semi-experimental approach of the music of REM. In another project with R.E.M, for the song "Supernatural Superserious", Moon and Jeremiah shot a series of 12 clips published on a special website[3] for free download as well as on YouTube. The music video was shot in various locations around New York City. On February 12, 2008 the website supernaturalsuperserious.com was launched, containing ten takes of the video available for download in high definition as well as a YouTube page for users to upload their own versions of the video.[4] Afterwards Moon also directed the music video of the single "Until the Day Is Done".[5]
Amongst other projects, in 2009, teaming with editor Nathanael Le Scouarnec, Moon directed Burning, a live movie about the scottish band Mogwai. The result was praised as one of the most unique concert films ever made - a black and white, almost abstract, vision of rock music, with a very brutal ending. A few months later, Moon directed by himself another short film in the same spirit, about HEALTH, a band from Los Angeles.
Besides the Take-Away Shows, he also shot a documentary about the September 2008 NYC All Tomorrow's Parties Festival.[6] In 2009 Moon, together with his friend Gaspar Claus, curated the third day of the Guitares au Palais-festival. It featured a line-up of indie bands playing on the instruments of Yuri Landman. In 2009 and 2010 Moon keeps filming short music movies with an increasing interest to portrait non-Western traditional artists. He filmed artists in Argentina, Chile, Cambodia, Egypt, Japan, New Zealand, Iceland, and Brasil.
He is also currently crowd-funding to complete four short films shot at the All Tomorrow's Parties music festival using the website kickstarter.com. As per the Kickstarter rules, the funding needs to be reached by 15 October 2011, or no money changes hands at all.
Vincent Moon often adopts a very warm color balance in his videos, with an enhanced contrast, leading to a largely yellow and black color palette.[7] He cites his main influences from experimental cinema mostly, from Brakhage to Tscherkassky, and from ethnographic cinema, Jean Rouch or Robert Gardner.
See List of Take-Away Shows for complete overview of all sessions.