Rock band Spoon’s latest music video for Do I Have to Talk You Into It is a joyride filled with the wonders of Photoshop. The lead singer Britt Daniel is constantly morphed, beautified, transformed and destroyed using the software’s tools. Daniel even turns into a coyote at some point, and we’re left with a momentary glimpse of a coyote in the woods.
Director Brook Linder was
interested in leaving the video largely subjective and allowing people their own interpretations. He asked himself, “We’re going to have him [Daniel] in a studio, what can you do there, conceptually, that hasn’t been done?”
Using YouTube as his inspiration, the director did a standard photo shoot with the singer and sent out the pictures to collaborators Jack Wagner, Adam Padilla and Anthony Isaac who are familiar with photo-editing. His instructions and directions were basic and minimal like “Indiana Jones melt-the-face off” and “he drank from the wrong cup, and melt the face off”.
They worked with hours of footage to make a video that lasts for just a little over four minutes. Linder used Adobe Premiere to add his own special touch and speed up things or slow down a segment until he got the stop motion look he wanted.
The final video is light, fun and disconcerting at the same time. Linder says he is not interested in a direct dystopian style but agrees that technology has a dark, apocalyptic side to it. “I think it’s more interesting to go the other direction and have this kind of strange feeling that there’s something creepy happening behind the screen,” he said.
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