Plants Go Porno in Hypnotic New Run The Jewels Music Video
Pulse films’ Ninian Doff directs the latest promo for alternative US hip hop group, Run the Jewels. As the hypnotic bass in ‘Love Again’ pulses behind the lyrically carnal love story, Doff’s music video unveils the most uncomfortably sexual nature-documentary of all time.
Following the pulsating beat, insects and flowers cross-pollinate in an overtly personified manner. Flowers ooze water as lively bees get their tongue stuck into the nectar of the plant. Venus fly traps tease the flies and butterflies that flutter around their lethal jaws, and everything in the music video throbs with excitement throughout.
Paul O’Reilly, editor at Homespun, ensured the 17 hours of footage captured on shoot was cut to give the insects and plants the personality to pull off the hypnotic sexual references.
“The challenge was choosing the right moments to give each insect a personality throughout the film.” Explains Paul, “We wanted the bees to look horny, the butterflies seductive, the flies dominated and the Venus flytraps alluring.
I was with Ninian and the Pulse team for the full five days of the shoot. It was a delicate and intriguing process to capture the film we needed to make the edit. To ensure the insects didn’t keep flying around too fast, they were contained in a chilled environment before filming which gave them that undulating slow kinesis we wanted when exposed to room temperature.”
Unlike the huge studios required for shooting people,everything for the music video was captured on a relatively small scale. The shoot was taken to Bristol where specialist nature documentary DOP, Rod Clarke,was brought in to provide expertise on shooting the insects and provide bespoke camera lenses and glass cases to capture the shots of the bugs up close.
“There was an insect handler on set, a mini hive for the bees and containers for the flies and butterflies. Unsurprisingly the insects were naturally attracted to the flowers on set, which was great for the shoot.Although there were moments we would have to run around with nets and sugar spray to recapture the opportunistic butterflies!”
Director Ninian Doff comments: “It was really important tome that all the insect footage was all real so that the video was an amazing example of how audio changes a film: with piano music and David Attenborough narration this could go on TV on a Sunday Afternoon, with Run The Jewels amazing song on the exact same footage is so x-rated people blush watching it.However insects are basically emotionless robots and the challenge was to make them perform in a way that was still 100% real but told all the personality and"performance" I wanted. This is where the edit was really like a needle in a haystack for Paul. Literally within an hour of footage of an insect there might be two seconds of an amazing twitch or sidestep that totally elevated the video and sold the emotion. The fact that we really connect and understand what the insects are feeling, be it lust or fear, is a huge testament to Paul's work on this.”
‘Love Again’ featuring Gangsta Boo is the ninth track from the US Hip hop group’s second album ‘Run the Jewels 2’, released on Mass Appeal and distributed through RED. The video premiered at Coachella on April 18th 2016 and has been released commercially today.
