Hello, this is Stromae
and we are gonna break down some of my music videos.
So this is the video clip of Papaoutai.
[Papaoutai]You are looking for the best representation
of an absent father.
And to have no father in the video clip was too obvious,
too easy.
And actually the best idea was just to have a mannequin
which is the representation of the father.
So that was the first time I worked with Marion Motin
and she contact a lot of beautiful dancers, a krump dancer.
I think krump is originally from here, LA, if I’m not wrong
and we had the chance to have one of the best dancer
of krump.
He came all the way from U.S. to Belgium
to dance on the video clip
in the video clip.
So yeah, we were lucky to have him.
At the moment where when I’m dancing with him,
we don’t even know if it’s a dream.
That’s why we see him from the car just alone.
And him, his head
he’s just dreaming that he’s dancing with his father.
This is the video of Tous Les Memes.
[Tous Les Memes]I remember we were discussing and I was saying,
Okay, let’s do this half woman, half man.
And he was like, Are you sure you wanna do that?
And I was like, Yeah, of course.
I’m okay with it.
I was naked here, but we were outside.
It was almost like 32 Fahrenheit.
So really cold.
So here we are standing and we are not in a real bed.
Difficult to shoot, to be honest.
So there is no mirror, actually they put just two glasses
two, everything, just to fake that it’s a mirror.
The camera is on a platform that can spin
and then they change the light.
And I remember that was not that easy to make it.
I remember this one, like this
and to have like everyone with the good distance.
That was tricky.
And yeah, thanks to Marion Motin,
it was perfect.
So the code in this video clip was
when I’m a man I’m in green
and when I’m a woman I’m in pink.
Then we finish on the pattern.
That’s exactly the pattern I have on my jacket.
‘Cause the concept on the last album was to have
a pattern for every song.
And the pattern for Tous Les Memes was those hearts.
This is the video of L’enfer.
[L’enfer]This time I wanted to focus
on doing something really simple.
I remember that Luc came with this idea of doing
like a long zoom out.
I remember that it was difficult
for the person who were doing the focus.
It was always blurry at the very beginning
’cause it’s a really macro shot.
So it was difficult for her.
I remember ’cause I think we did 10 takes, 15 takes.
I don’t remember exactly.
But I remember that one takes
I forgot just to open my eyes.
I was almost like sleeping.
[laughs]And I was like, Okay, sorry guys.
It’s a pretty easy trick.
You play your song in slow mo
to have a fast forward effect
and you play your track in fast forward
to have a slow mo effect.
So we had to have different speed on the same track.
To have this Ariana Grande ponytail,
we work with the same hair stylist, Alicia Dubois
who’s a friend of Coralie Barbier.
But to be honest,
it was a little bit complicated to do this.
We put some metal in my, just on my head to make it.
So here that was the opposite then the beginning.
So it wasn’t fast forward.
So I had like five second to do everything we just saw.
I was a little bit nervous about the performance.
I thought I had to do a lot of stuff
and actually it was a little bit too fake
when I was doing too much on the, on, you know, on acting.
And finally I just had to do some little subtle movement
which was more than enough to make it credible
and authentic.
So this is the video of Sante.
[Sante]So the concept of the video clip came up from Luc.
The song Sante is just to celebrate
the one who can’t celebrate the actual workers.
The story behind the video clip is just
some manuals everywhere on working places.
The workers can be inspired by it
and just dance and have fun on their workplace.
And actually we did the video clip in Ukraine
’cause you are used to work with Ukraine.
A lot of Belgian artists, French artists work with Ukraine.
We wanted to have real people dancing.
We didn’t want to have real dancers
and you can feel it in the video.
We had Marion the choreographer,
the same as on Fils de Joie.
Actually she was like motivating them.
Like she was screaming behind the camera, like,
Okay, go ahead and.
It’s funny to see how natural they were
and how much they they gave for the video clip.
I’m really thankful.
I think that the very last shot,
I think she drunk a little bit
like just to make it more natural.
This is the video of Fils de Joie.
[Fils de Joie]In a fictional country,
the state holds a funeral for a missing sex worker.
That’s exactly the concept of the video clip.
And the original concept came from Coralie Barbier.
Usually we have a concept behind the song
and we work the three of us,
Coralie, Luc and me
and we brainstorm together.
This national funeral was the best way to explain
and to express what I’m saying in the song Fils de Joie
[Fils de Joie]So we added that harpsichord
at the very beginning of the Fils de Joie song.
We had to make the song a little bit longer.
And that was the best way to introduce,
to have an introduction.
We wanted to explain
that it’s a national parade
and to be the most realistic,
we had to start even without any sound.
That’s the reason why we decided
to take the time to have a real, like a movie introduction.
That’s a big monument in Brussels
and we had to work in post production
just to make it a little bit like brutalism.
So we were 500 on the set
but here you can see that there is more than 500.
So everything was done in post.
We had just one line here.
Those are real.
Those are real.
Those are fake.
The first rows are real, but the very end are fake.
Thanks to the post-production,
we had a lot of people.
[laughs] [Man] I have a question.Mmh.
[Man] How’d you land on the hair hat? [laughs]It’s a fictional country.
And the best way to be a fiction was just to have
a special haircut that comes from nowhere actually
that you can’t point a country in particular.
The technique is like a big burn
with fake hair on it already.
Then they put my hair like this.
They put the cake on my head
and then she tries to just hide the fake hair with my hair.
And then finally you have this haircut
which is a bit folkloric.
It’s actually the haircut of the cover of the album.
The goal was to be in a fictional country
and we tried to make it the more multicultural as possible.
Of course there is a lot of white people
but we are in Belgium though
so it was difficult to find a lot of black people.
That was the goal,
to have like a big mixture of people
from all around the world.
And that this group is like the first real choreography.
The reference for me is Riverdance.
Of course the goal was not to imitate what they do
but where the choreography is completely inspired
by this kind of traditional dances.
The choreography with the coffin,
that was an inspiration from,
I dunno if it’s in Ghana
but there is some videos on TikTok
and they’re just holding this coffin
and they dance at the same time.
And we wanted just to do the same
’cause it’s a positive way to celebrate someone
and we wanted to do the same here in the video clip.
[Man] That’s perfect.Okay.
[Man] And then if you could grab the remoteand just do a couple fake like button,
like you’re pausing it.
Okay.
Oh, actually that’s good. Oh, there.
Yeah. Do both, do both.
That’s fine.
[laughs]Do that, yeah.
