Garbage Music Video
Surrounded by Wolves hired me to build a music video for their single “Garbage”. They gave me full creative control to do whatever I wanted. I had three goals I set out to accomplish for this project; give it a playful vibe, shoot creative b-roll as a supporting element and tell an intricate story about life.
Programs: After Effects + Premiere Pro
Gear: Canon EOS R + Canon EF 24-70mm f/4L
The Playful Vibe
With the upbeat style of the song, I wanted to create a Foo Fighters style video. It was important to me to have some fun with this edit and not take it too seriously. The driving element of the video is the vintage footage seen throughout. I spent some time looking through the creative commons and found two different videos that I found tied together nicely. One was from an short film of a couple going on a date and the other was a commercial from the late 60’s that featured a woman acting as a character in different situations throughout her life. Both of these videos contrasted each other perfectly as one was more serious in tone and the other was over the top and almost silly in nature. Another difference between the two was; vibrant colours vs black and white.
Creative B-Roll
When it came to capturing some creative b-roll as a supporting element I wanted to keep it simple and clever. The main metaphor of this video was going to be about life and I wanted to represent it with some macro footage of a leaf being torn up. I would then take the footage and reverse it to make it look like the hands were stitching them back together. The video starts with a small piece of a dead leaf and by the end of video the leaf has been brought back to life. I even used some colour grading techniques to bring a the green colour back into the leaf the closer it came to becoming whole.
The Story
The line in the song “stand up and be a man” stuck with me and gave me this idea of overcoming the unknown. When chatting with lead singer Josh Wong from the band, he threw around the idea of having it feature a woman instead of a man. Doing this would juxtapose that line in the song. I really liked that and felt it had a lot of depth to it. With this in mind, I was thrilled to find the old footage featuring the two ladies.
I wanted to tell a story of how one can pass life by being caught in a vicious circle of comparing themselves to others. The American Dream analogy is present throughout and how materialism can cripple a human’s self-identity. The lady in the car seems to want something more, while the lady that has it all displays problems of her own. Both characters are unhappy and life is passing them by.
The only bit of dialog spoken in the music video is of the lady in the car mouthing the words “stand up and be a man”. After she makes that statement everything is sent into chaos. In my mind she is telling the universe she wants it all and what follows is the negative energy of envy.
The leaf concept is really just that feeling of wanting to rewind and try again. Life is so delicate, you can’t just stick it back together after finding all of the pieces.
Lastly the title of the song is called “Garbage” and I feel this ties everything together. Both women are surrounded by what they feel is garbage. They long for something more and are on a mission to find something more lustrous.
Production Notes
I wanted to keep it a 1:1 ratio so all of the footage fit together since most of it was from the 1960’s. The colour green was emphasized to represent envy and life along with a grainy effect to date it. The edits all play off of each other and help push the story forward at a fast pace. Once the lady in the car crashes she is removed from the story and the leaf starts to be stitched back together.
The Premiere Pro Timeline. Pink = Leaf Footage / Blue = Lady in Car Footage / Green = Consumerism Lady
