- Music Video Wire

Interview with Directors Sophie Muller & Logan on the making of the No Doubt, “Underneath It All” music video!

“It was a really sweet song, so I wanted to make “Underneath It All” a little less innocent, that’s why I came up with the idea to make it a bit sexual.” – Sophie Muller

Interview with director Sophie Muller:

MVW: I really like the new video. It seems pretty straight forward.

SM: It was kind of difficult making a video for this song since it is more of a personal lyric. I wanted to do something really simple. Just focus on her speaking to the camera. It was a very straightforward video. It was a really sweet song, so I wanted to make “Underneath It All” a little less innocent, that’s why I came up with the idea to make it a bit sexual. I thought that would be an interesting and tasteful way for Gwen to perform the video.

MVW: Who worked with you on the visual effects?

SM: I co-directed this video with Logan. They came up with an idea that everyone was happy with and we were all quite keen to work with them.

MVW: How did you come up with the concept for the video?

SM: Each of us tried to think of what we could do. The simple basis of the idea was that I will stick with Gwen giving her really good performance to camera and have Logan do lots of effects. When we actually came down to it, I realized that idea was too random and we had to be more specific. So I came up with the idea that Gwen would do a kind of strip to camera. She started off with tons of make-up and hair, kind of really over done like a stripper. As the video proceeds she looses her make up at the ends the make up and overdone look is gone. The idea was stripping back to being your simple self. We had to do it using visual metaphors. She was going to be talking her clothes off, but that made it too complicated. Instead we made it into sections where in each section she was less made up. In the end section we came up with the idea to include Lady Saw and using the entire band. This was a last minute decision, so we could only include it in the end section. It was a bit like the scene from Sound Of Music, when they were riding bicycles in time with the music. We changed it to show that they were in Jamaica in order to get the Jamaican feel to the video. This is where Logan did their visual effects. Logan was around all the time on the shoot and I was around shooting their bit. It was a good collaboration.

MVW: In the background you had the heart in a couple of scenes.

SM: When doing a performance video, I like to have the camera in front, not moving to the side, giving it one angle. Then designing the background to compliment whatever the atmosphere you want in that particular shot. The Heart makes a nice frame, it was based on some fashion we saw. We did it for the one scene where it gets black, then someone took the heart and placed it against the other set and we saw that it fit in that set as well.

MVW: Was it difficult deciding on the set design?

SM: It was all put together really quickly. We all just went in one day and decided what the first set was going to be like. Kind of ornate fancy room. They built that very quickly. We then came up with the heart with much simpler graphic. It then goes to the pink wall which adds Jamaican flavor.

MVW: How did you bring out the stunning look of the colors?

SM: It was simply teasing the colors. We just matched the color scheme. The color that goes with the pink wall is orange, so we had the boys wearing orange track suite. Then there happened to be this lime green crate lying around, which we just hammered on the wall to create a make shift basketball court. That was a really last minute idea and we did not have a basketball set. Seems in Jamaica, they usually use crates with the bottom cut out. I originally wanted Gwen to wear turquoise, but the stylist suggested lime green to match the crate.

MVW: Did you do anything to pull the color out even more in post?

SM: I pushed it a little bit to make it more contracting, but nothing fancy at all. I used Symphony, which is like an online AVID. I edited my section and gave the whole video to Logan so they could put their bits in. We discussed little bits, like in between each section they did little stars and the scene where she kind of slaps her bottom.

MVW: Where did you shoot the video?

SM: It was all shot in one studio.

MVW: Gwen has such a stong camera presence and the
Caribbean vibe to the song is great.

SM: She is a good performer. So I liked the idea of letting her perform alone rather than a band performance. We could not think of a way to make it good and have the band in the performance as well. Because of the shortness of time, we all agreed that it was best to have Gwen do the performance. The song was more of personal lyric, it’s one person’s thoughts.

Interview with Director/Visual Effects artist Ben Conrad of “Logan”

MVW: How did you end up working with Sophie on this video?

BC: We were treating the track and presented a lot of boards and some of the frames we wanted to do. It was kind of a split between the label and the band. The band was comfortable working with Sophie. They liked some of the frames we did and wanted to have just little moments of “Logan” integrated with a real personal piece about Gwen. It was just better this way with Sophie capturing Gwen’s great performance. It was really intimate and their personal relationship evokes a lot of that great performance from Gwen.

MVW: I understand that you did the effects accenting the video. How did you create these effects?

BC: Off set, Alexei and I shot some glitter and water then used those as a star element to make the 3-D clouds. It was made pretty simple for Gwen to just to give it that religious fantastic look. This was directed by Sophie as well. She had a real clear idea of how she wanted to present Gwen.

The bike scene was where we unleashed. This was the one moment where you see the entire band together. For this scene we shot singles of all the band members on bikes in front of a blue screen on a 12 foot turntable. We stood them up there and shot away as many angles and rotations as possible. The band members were rigged to a lift that picked them up above the ground so they could peddle. We laid out tracks so we could shoot two of them together riding side by side and had grips pulling them back and forth on the small track.

When Alexei, Sophie and I originally talked about the idea, it was to include some of the footage they shot while in Jamaica. Gwen wanted to do something about Jamaica of course and how they would get around on bicycles while staying there recording the track. However we wanted to create something unique for that little moment and came up with the scene with the band members. We kind of gave it a “Sound of Music” through Jamaica look.

MVW: There is one scene where she smacks her side and stars came off of her?

BC: This was one of the original frames we submitted to the band. Originally when we were thinking about the track we thought about the peeling away of the earth layers relating to the track and the metaphor of the song. The echo emanation side protruding from Gwen’s shape relates to that within the concept of the song and serves as a graphic treatment in relation to the song. In all the treatments we wanted to stay within that idea of peeling and emanation of layers.

MVW: You usually do more CG kind of work. This was definitely not the norm for you.

BC: We are really trying to combine to more live action, performance, props and sets. It was a great experience for us to watch Sophie work. This was a really great learning experience for us. I have a hard time even thinking about our stuff as visual effects because to me, it’s more of a personal take on graphics.

Credits:
Production Co.: Oil Factory
Directors: Sophie Muller / Logan
Visual Effects: Logan

As an artist who is used to shooting legendary music icons such as Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Eddie Vedder, Bruce Springsteen and Tupac Shakur, photographer Danny Clinch is becoming a legend in his own right. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Spin, GQ, New York Times Magazine, and other publications, and he has published two books, ìDiscovery Inn,î in 1998; and ìWhen the Iron Bird Fliesî in 2001.

In recent years, Clinchís passion for imagery, music, and stories has come together at Three on the Tree Productions, a New York City-based boutique film company that Clinch founded in 2003. Clinch has expanded his horizons to include music videos, concert films, and documentaries into his repertoire. His most recent project is a music video for Tom Waitsí latest album, ìOrphans,î a creative endeavor that started out as a series of publicity stills before taking on a life of its own. The video, ìLie to Me,î rhythmicallyóand energeticallyóanimates Clinchís still photos of Waits playing his guitar near a roadside cafÈ.

MVWire: Could you talk about how you were awarded the video?

Danny Clinch: I was photographing Tom for publicities for his new box set CD – Orpahns and we were out at this little bizarre roadside cafÈ that is out in the country of Northern California around were Tom lives. I have done a fair amount of film work, a couple of music videos, documentaries, concert films, etc. The idea for these photographs is Ö Tom showed up with a truckload full of old vintage speakers and cassette players and radios, etc. and decided that we would build this speaker cabinet behind him. (It was) what you think a Tom Waits speaker cabinet would look like, with all these crazy bells and whistles. Then we plugged his guitar into it and we were shooting these photographsÖ it was just sort of an amazing location; everything came together and we were all so excited about itómyself and my assistant and Tom kind of built this thing together, over a cup of coffee.

We were super excited about it and Tom looked at me and said, ìItís too bad that we do not have a video cameraÖ this would make a great video.î Then he said, ìMaybe I can have my wife run out with her video camera,î and it didnít go farther than that. I said, ìWell, check it out. Why donít I load something in my 35 mm camera, Iíll burn through it really fast as I go through the motions and we will create something that is just really raw and I can animate those stillsñrun them together and we will create something that is just really raw, something that is not lip synced, something that is just super down and dirtyñyou know, style.î Of course, he got a big smile on his face and he was like, (in a rough Tom Waits voice) ìYeah, that sounds great.î We jumped on it; he went through it a couple of times. He did sing the chorus a few times so it might appear there is a moment of lip sync in there, maybe not. We loaded it all into the computer and started pushing it around.

MVWire: Did you talk to the label about it at all?

DC: I just called them and said, Tom said that he wanted to consider turning this thing into a video. Matt at the label said, ìWhat would it cost to do it?î We gave him an idea; they just wanted to keep it super Lo Fi. We were going to throw some animation into the mix, some drawings that were done on glass, it was pretty cool. In the end I think they just wanted to keep it super Lo Fi and I was all for it. We just stripped it down to the barest essentials.

MVWire: So the video was something that was inspiration, in the moment.

DC: The opportunity to do something like that with Tom was just Ö I didnít care what it was going to cost.

He is fantastic; he is one of the most creative guys, he is very restless as wellÖ He doesnít like to sit still for too long. If you are taking a photograph of him, you might get two frames of the same pose and the next thing you know he is off doing something else. You have to be able to work fast, which is why I think I got the gig with him.

He is all for the creative process; he is always coming up with ideas and participating. You have some people that just sit there and are looking for direction all the time and there are others that actually participate in the creative process, and thatís what he does and he is always bringing something to the table.

He is definitely into itÖ he is a super creative guy and has a lot of great ideas, a lot of them are super simpleóa lot of time the more simple the better

For example at one point Ö the publicist had asked me to get couple of simple head shots that they could use. After a couple of frames he looked at me and said, ìOK, are we done here? Because I feel like I am getting my hair cut.î

MVWire: What was the actual process of creating the video?

DC: I shot the stills with a motor drive on handheld. I just shot a bunch of frames consecutively and had him kind of running around and he was really giving it up which was really kind of cool.

I shot it several times over and over again and then said, ìLetís do a few close ups of your face, feet and things like that so that we would have some things to cut away toÖ letís do a couple that are really wide.î Basically I was thinking like an editor, I was coming in close then backing up wide, having him doing some motion.

I had never done anything like that before. When I got back and loaded it into the computer I talked to a friend of mine that knows the process and she was very excited and she said, ìYou shot this on a tripod, right?î I said, ìNo,î and she said, ìOoo.î And I said, ìWhat do you mean?î She said, ìWell, if you shoot it on a tripod, the background stays steady and the subject moves throughout the background, and thatís how you get it animated to make sense.î I said, ìYou (know) what, it doesnít have to make senseóitís Tom Waits.î

MVWire: What went into creating the black and white look of the video?

DC: I used color film for the most part. I drained all the color out of it in the edit and added a lot of contrast to itÖ (and) edited on Final Cut Pro.

MVWire: What was the editing process once you had the images loaded into the computer?

DC: Another friend of mine, Tosh, he is really an animator and we started to work on it. As I said, we were putting animation in with the stills. He started it and loaded it into the computer and just started to align the cut together. Once he did that, he put the images in some sort of order. I came in came up with the idea of stopping at certain points and having areas where you could actually freeze on the photo.

I did belabor over it; it is Tom Waits and I wanted to give it my best.

Director Chris Milk’s recent effort for Audioslave “Doesn’t Remind Me” forces even the most cynical critics to sit up and take notice of music videos as art. The choices of camera angles along with his use of color, help create the “retro” feel of the video and reel the audience into the scenes with an almost voyeuristic sense. Milk has used his artistic abilities as a director to capture a slice of small-town America, depicting not only the day-to-day challenges we must face, but also the hard questions we must ask ourselves about war.

Will: Nathan has directed videos by Chevelle, Linkin Park, Disturbed, Mest, Static-X, System Of A Down
Thank you for taking the time and welcome back!

Steve Smith: Hey nathan!
Its an honour to finally be able to talk to you, your videos rock. I got a bio up of yourself on my MVD website. I love the story about how you and Jon met, do you plan shooting any KoRn videos in the future? Are you still into the L.A. graffiti scene? In the MTV music video awards why didn’t you go up with Linkin Park, same with the other directors? Im an up and comming 16 year old Australian director aspiring to become a MV director. Do you have any tips for up and comming MVD’s trying to break it into the industry? What inspires you to make music videos, and which other directors do you respect the most? Also how do you go about writing your treatments? Do you have a set format or place where you go to write them? Any feedback would be awesome!

Nathan Karma Cox: Hi Steve,
Thanks for the compliments. I stay involved with the graffiti scene through friends and at times some work. I’ll do a piece just for fun when I get the opportunity. I have recently painted some in the back drop of the Boxcar Racer video. Most of my videos have a hidden “karma” tag in there somewhere.

At the MTV awards, they honor the band, not the director. Most of the time the artists wont even mention the director’s name. I am thankful that Linkin Park and Joe Hahn gave me some credit. That was nice of them. I didnt attend because I was on vacation at Burning Man.

Breaking into the business is very hard. Every director I know has had a different, unique approach to breaking in. I can really only speak from my experience. For me, starting as an assistant editor was the key. I learned from some pretty amazing editors and eventually started editing low budget projects. At the same time, I had a bunch of friends in the music scene and shot small promo videos for them on the side. I continued building relationships with record labels as an editor. When I was ready, I convinced a band to let me do a video and they were loyal enough to give me a shot. Then it became a game of perserverance. I continued to edit to pay the bills and eventually other bands began giving me directing gigs. It was really the loyalty of the bands I had relationships with that got the ball rolling. Label people have too much to lose, so its harder to get them to take a chance on anyone new.

Im ultimately inspired by the prospect of creating new imagery. Film and music have always been my two loves and music video allows me to combine the best of both worlds. I feel blessed to have this career and Im thankful everyday.

I think my favorite director is Chris Cunningham. I wish he would do more work. I also love Michel Gondry, Mark Romanek and David Fincher. I think that anyone who actually makes it to the level of a working director should get major props. Im a fan of anyone who is able to grow the thick skin it takes to withstand the daily rejections that this career provides.

When I write, usually I put the MP3 on my IPOD, throw on the headphones and go for a walk. For some reason, if Im active while Im thinking, I get better results. Sometimes I just close my eyes and see what images appear. Other times I’ll write ten, one sentence ideas on a piece of paper and then begin to visualize each one until I feel like Im going in the right direction. Believe itor not, the best idea is not always the one I focus on, because although it may look amazing in my head, it may be to complex for a non creative label executive to understand. It’s a fine line, but its got to be an idea that can be understood instantly.

Thanks for the questions
-Karma

Saloki: hi nathan
im a uni student studying new media and at the moment im doing a design investigation into animated music videos.
i was wondering if you could give me a little insight into that kind of industry and answer some of these questions please.

who decides the concept and use of medium for the video.

who has the most influential creative process on the outcome ie band members, designers, directors.

why does there seem to be a mass of music videos using animation at the present.

Is it a trend or is it medium that has always run along side film.

what inspires you

what processes do use to create your work

thanks for your time and you dont have to answer all but it would be most appreciated for any information.
john

Nathan Karma Cox: Hi John
Ultimately the director has the most say in a concept that they are directing, although band imput is very important to me. I feel that a band has one chance to get their career going and its important to me that they are happy with their image. I like to address as much imput from them as I can.

As far as animated videos go, I think that it is a trend that is happening now, but it will burn out soon. I think now that 3d animation is so accessible, it has become an exciting alternative. In an animated video, animation supervisors and animation directors are super important to the look and style of the video. Generally the director doesnt have the ability to animate himself, so communication with the animators is highly important to a unified vision.

What inspires me? Thats a tough one. I get inspiration from everything. features, people watching, and sometimes just a single photograph will spark an idea. Anything that inspires imagery can be used. I am naturally drawn to the darker things. I always have been. I guess anything that can be used as a jumping off point can be used for videos. But its gotta come back to the music or the lyrics that get the juices flowing.

Thanks
-Karma

cheryl: Hi Nathan,

I became a fan of yours when i saw a few of your music videos. I even saw your website that Shannon does. I think it looks so cool. I have written a few stories on Shannon’s Korn fiction site. One is posted. Anyway,here is my question for you: Do you ever see yourself becoming a feature film director?

Cheryl

Nathan Karma Cox: Hi Cheryl,
My goals are to definitely move on to features. Right now I am currently writing a script and have started to developa few feature projects.

Shannon rocks
-Karma

Steve Smith: Hey Nathan!
Thanks for the great words of wisdom! I came up with a few more questions [Cool] When you were growing up what people inspired you to keep trying no matter what? Did you always want to shoot music videos as a kid or did you realise your passion for mv’s later in your directing days? Besides MVD’s what people inspire you in life? For example mine would have to be Bono(u2) and Sir Bob Geldoff. Would you please be able to speak of your time at Burning Man? Ive been researching it, some of the artwork is amazing, for everyone on the board you can see photos of Nathans WINNING(woohoo!) group at http://www.renedstory.homestead.com/burning.html and last years entries at http://burningman.com/whatisburningman/2001/01_art_theme.html Do you ever think about going back and directing another video for some of your earlier bands, i.e. Coal Chamber, S.O.A.D? Haha on the slight chance you have time, I posted some of my treatments on the site although havent had much feedback and wondering if you could read one of them?  If you dont have enough time thats totally cool, I understand that you must get very busy. Anyway any replies would be awesome again! Every word is inspirational from a director of your talents.
Cheers Steve [Cool] Rock on!

Nathan Karma Cox:
Hi Steve,
Although I spent all my free time in movie theaters, most of the people that I could relate to growing up were musicians. I think my biggest influence was Robert Smith from The Cure. His music helped me through some pretty rough times. I remember early on deciding that whatever I did, I wanted to give something back to the kids that gave them an outlet.

As a kid I always thought I would go straight into features, but as I got older, music became a strong catharsis. Music videos just felt natural. The best of both worlds so to speak.

Burning Man is a festival that happens in the Nevada desert. It was created for artist based on a theme of free expression and participation. I went a few years back and fell in love with it. No rules for a week! It was amazing. Burning Man is based on theme camps, where groups of people get together and work on a project to contribute to the whole experience. I camp with The Death Guild. Our camp is based on Mad Max and we all wear leather, ride modified motorcycles and every night webattle in a full scale, working, Thunderdome. I always have the time of my life and I have met a whole family of freaks like me that I adore.

I would love to direct some of my older buddies. Unfortunately Shavo from S.O.A.D. has been directing his own videos and Coal Chamber broke up.

Thanks for the interest
-Karma