How many make up the collective Dent de Cuir – and how does your creative process work?
The collective was founded by Benjamin Mege and Jean-Philippe Chartrand in 2010. We usually work as a duo for conception and concept development. When the concept is approved we build our production team based on the mandate and budget within our roster of friends who all come from different artistic areas such as photography, graphic design, cinema, animation, etc.
Do you all pitch in ideas and the best one wins?
Yes, we both think about ideas, concepts, feelings, even if it’s very abstract and then we examine and challenge those ideas by putting them up against others. Most of the time, interesting things come out of this process, and if not, we repeat the process until we get the perfect idea.
There’s a hands-on craft element to your videos beyond the 3D work. Do you all have an arts background?
We both come from the graphic design world so we have affinities with art direction. For now, our works are mostly DIY productions so we have to deal with what we have. We prefer to focus on the idea before the technique.
Do you work out of a studio and whereabouts?
We actually work remotely in our own graphic design studios – Benjamin in France and Jean Philippe in Montreal.
How did the idea for the videos come about – do you work closely with the bands?
We have worked with artists who gave us a fair amount of trust which made the creative process very interesting. Even if our videos are designed to give a graphical life to songs, we always try to develop imagery and concepts with the desire to do something new and fresh, usually taking us out of our comfort zone but we think the bands appreciate that.
Are music videos part of the day job or are they more passion-led projects?
For the time being, music videos are a fraction of our day (& night) workflow. They are our experimentation projects.
What are you working on now?
A music video for a German electronic project called Neosignal which are about to release their debut album.
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