Tokyo and Paris Share the Same Story in Pheonix's Split Screen Video

Object & Animal director Oscar Boyson teams up with Phoenix and Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend for new single ‘Tonight’. The video, which also stars Kunichi Nomura, was shot in Tokyo and Paris. 

Director Oscar Boyson said, “The song ‘Tonight’ was created through a series of remote exchanges - Phoenix and Ezra were never in the same place when they were recording and producing it. When the challenge of making a video that featured them both arose, in spite of the fact that Ezra was in Tokyo and Phoenix in Paris, split screen almost seemed too obvious... I had to come up with a bunch of other ideas before returning to it, but I love cities and I love being playful with the form and felt like we could do something simple, building from little match and perspective ideas like the fact that both Tokyo and Paris have Eiffel-like towers and Statues of Liberty. 

“Split screen can break your brain if you try for obsessive perfectionism with timing, mirror imaging, interplay between the two frames, and so on and so forth. Early on I decided this wouldn't be an exercise in perfectionism, that it'd be more fun to be messy and imperfect, and I think planning shots with that in mind lead to more discoveries in the edit, where (long-time editor/collaborator) Nate DeYoung was often able to make the two stories talk to each other in ways I couldn't have ever planned. 

“Ezra came up with his character, a Francophile in Tokyo. Like a guy who was trying to go to Paris and got off at the wrong layover but is still determined to find it in Tokyo. That helped guide our location search - once you start looking for them there are tons of examples of Paris in Tokyo: brasseries, cafes, wine bars, florists, even a museum dedicated to Le Petit Prince! The other visual that really cemented the strength of the concept was this chance to do a driving shot with passengers in both front seats. You could of course get prop cars to do this anywhere, but knowing we could have it organically because of where drivers are positioned in each city gave us a strong visual to build around and sort of validated the whole approach to the video.”