Media Meditation #1: Fusing Daft Punk and Visuals!

So, recently two of my friends and I decided to embark on a highly limbic adventure one night - watching a movie based on Daft Punk's Discovery album.

For those of you that don't know what Daft Punk is...

Daft Punk is an electronic music duo consisting of French musicians Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter

Daft Punk performing at a concert.

Wikipedia image.

Previous to this film, I had only listened to a few Daft Punk songs, and only a few of them were from the Discovery album. I was pleasantly surprised at the music, as I genuinely liked most of them.

Just a basic overview of the film:

Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem (yes, those are 5s) is an Japanese animated film involving the story of a musical band of extraterrestrials, in a parallel universe, being abducted and taken to Earth, and their subsequent escape.

Each song in the Discovery album accompanies a specific scene of the film - sort of an imagining of the music. Taken as a film, however, consider it as the music video for the album. On an intriguing note, aside from the first song One More Time, which is played by the band in the story, every other song is a soundtrack - not part of the story, instead accompanying the events that unfold.

You may want to start at 1:30 if you want to skip all the boring stuff

Interestingly, production techniques were limited in the audio department. Aside from the album itself, there were very few sound effects. Overall, the music and visual quality melded together fairly well (although others may argue as to the style of the cinematography). In addition, the pacing of this film allowed audiences enough time and mental "space" to ponder a bit further beyond pure visual enjoyment.

Here, I will refrain from stating the value message of this film, as I believe it changes depending on how you view this film. I do believe that some of the appropriate things we should learn from this film is the power of animation and also how crucial it is for the soundtrack and the cinematography to meld together.

In conclusion? Interesting... Very interesting experience. In fact, to label this Interstella as a film would be wrong. It should be an adventure or experience.