Formidable

  • Artist

    stromae

  • Release date

    Juin, 2013

  • Producer

    Mosaert

  • Views on Youtube

"I had the idea for this video once when we were recording and I had an image in my mind of one day when I was walking around Brussels and a homeless man asked me more or less what we hear in the song, 'Tu te crois beau?' ['Do you think you're good looking?']. I remembered that moment and I wanted to portray it."

Stromae's brilliant idea for the "Formidable" video was to play a drunk, broken man out in the real world, not in a recording studio. One morning Stromae went to Place Louise in Brussels, a hot spot for trouble, to play one of the most difficult roles of his career and one we all know - a drunk man singing of his despair, exposed and miserable before the "real" people of Brussels. It was filmed using hidden cameras placed carefully around Place Louise in order to ensure that the reactions of passers by and the police were genuine.

The clip was unveiled just a few days after filming and it became a media phenomenon. Stromae was unanimously praised for this performance which won the Best Clip award at the 2014 Victoires de la Musique.

"One scene of note was cut from the montage: the police came to speak to me for a second time before taking me away. I was sat against a lamp post and they wanted to take me home by force, they were telling me that I was being filmed by paparazzi but it was actually my team of hidden cameramen. At one point I had to discreetly stop playing my low-voiced character for a moment so that they didn't reveal the trick to everybody else, I explained to them that they were hidden cameramen. One of the policemen didn't believe me but I was insistent and finally they saw that I was behaving too normally for someone who was meant to be drunk.

Credits

  • Jérôme Guiot Director
  • Thomas van Cottom Executive Producer
  • Quentin de Villers Video Shoot
  • Gabriel Bertrand Video Shoot
  • Lucien Keller Video Shoot
  • Bertrand Monette Video Shoot
  • Jean-Marc Panis Video Shoot
  • Roland Voglaire Sounddesign & Mix
  • Pascal Oberlin Editing
  • Wild English Translation
  • Bold At Work Graphics

Special thanks to

Camille Voglaire, Michael Maurin, Thomas Balthazar, Yassine Fila Boudraa