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Music

Meet French Collective MEGAFORCE™ And Check Out Their Sketches For Madonna's Latest Music Video

These four brilliant minds have been churning out some of the best music videos of the past few years.

Léo Berne, Charles Brisgand, Raphaël Rodriguez, and Clément Gallet are the four members of the French collective MEGAFORCE™. As former graphic designers, they had a penchant for the experimental, and their interest in the avant-garde led them deep down the rabbit hole to the realm of video art, uniting around a common desire to change the music video landscape. They named their collective after an old action film featuring a “phantom army of super elite fighting men whose weapons are the most powerful science can devise.” Although the movie was a commercial failure, MEGAFORCE™ surpassed its source of inspiration to become an international success.

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It’s almost hard to believe their first awkward sketches for the band Naïve New Beaters resulted in the superb music video for 2008’s “Live Good”. Thanks to their smart usage of green screens, they were able to construct a deep and detailed universe to immerse their characters in, and “Live Good” became an instant hit that landed them at forefront of the music video scene (with a little help, of course, from some social networking magic).

From that moment on, their star was on the rise. The band went on to work with bands like Goose, Metronomy, Late Of The Pier, and Tame Impala, directing some of the most memorable videos these bands have ever done. One of the secrets of MEGAFORCE™’s style is that each video looks as if it’s done in just one take, forming a fluid storyline where causes and effects seamlessly follow one another like a domino effect. One example is Kid Cudi’s “Pursuit of Happiness,” where you see the rapper defying gravity in every single shot.

An outtake from The Greeks music video for “Is Tropical”.

More recently, they worked with the queen of pop herself, Madonna, on the video for her track “Gimme All Your Luvin,” featuring M.I.A and Nicki Minaj. We visited their studio and chatted with them about their career, most notable works and creative process for our mini documentary (above). In the process, we managed to snag the storyboards they put together for the Madonna shoot, with sketches so detailed we could hardly believe they considered them “just drafts.”

The final result was shot over the course of two days in New York, harkening back to Madonna’s Superbowl performance with a football theme… but with a twist. Check out the video below to see how the concept came together:

All pictures courtesy of MEGAFORCE™.