Twin: How Matt Muir Took Devendra Banhart on a Brooding, Neon-Drenched Nightcrawl
Under the neon cloak of a nighttime cityscape, a car slinks solemnly through traffic. There’s a grinding inevitability to its journey, punctuated by the humdrum of synthesisers and distorted guitars. Arriving at an illuminated gas station, the car’s passenger shuffles out of his vehicle and into a nearby payphone. There, he hears a message he knew was coming yet can’t stand to hear. Whether it be by the monotony of the city or the consequences of his own choices, Devendra is trapped. He’s doomed to continue on a search that will never conclude; for, in his own words, “this precious thing, at the heart of everything you’ve wanted”.
The music video for Twin - the newly-released single from Devendra Banhart - is an aesthetic dream. It drips with a noir-infused 80s swagger, and collides with big city anxieties to create the feeling of being caught in a web. Whilst the song’s inherent rhythm and tone do much to create its own imagery, the video came to life through the work of director Matt Muir alongside a team including producer Carrie Cates and editor Joe Olmstead.
To find out more about how the music video for Twin was made, LBB’s Adam Bennett caught up with Matt, Carrie, and Joe, alongside Devendra himself and his manager Christian Stavros…
LBB> What was your initial vision for the video when you first heard the song, and how closely does it align with the finished film?
Matt> I had a strong response to Devendra’s song, and wanted to communicate the emotion the song evokes and visually portray the influences that I heard. The most important thing to me is talking with the artist about the themes in the song and their album, then making sure those guide the process more than anything else. After talking with Devendra, I started cultivating some basic ideas of how we could visualise a sense of loneliness, disconnection, and longing.
But we also wanted it to have a sense of humour. Devendra is such a funny and thoughtful guy, that I definitely wanted to make that a facet of the video and not get too dark or pretentious about what we were doing.
LBB> The video has such an iconic vibe - what kind of sources did you turn to for inspiration, and how did you pull it off?!
Matt> I love so many of those neo-noir films from the 80s, both mainstream and under the radar, so they obviously had an influence on our approach. Devendra and I both really love American Gigolo, and I think the ideas of male sensuality and being stuck in a cycle of behaviour you can’t easily escape were attractive to us.
There were so many touch tones from that era for me, but I basically told Devendra I wanted to make a sexy 80’s neo-noir that felt like it could have been scored by Tangerine Dream.
Devendra Banhart> Matt’s just one of the most disciplined and focused directors I've ever worked with. Disciplined and focused - but not rigid.
I think that part is key. He was so in the moment that if a good new idea came up he was totally open to it. All in all, a dream to work with.
Christian Stavros> Devendra is a true collaborator and he found a true creative partner in Matt, whose references matched the creative and fantasy of this album and song so perfectly.
Watching the two work out their shared vision from concept to screen was inspiring. Matt really dug in to help expand on the world Devendra had in his mind, and really nailed not only the aesthetic but the pace and the energy and the emotional tone.
Photo credit: Jackie Lee Young
LBB> Joe, how did you go about delivering that aesthetic from an editing standpoint?
Joe> The song itself evokes a night time vibe that slowly slinks along. So this, along with the incredible footage captured on set, made it easy to get the feel for what the edit needed. There's always a million ways you can edit something but most of the time, if the team has captured what was intended and what the director is seeing, it all comes together in a natural way.
LBB> I understand that you also looked to the aesthetic of 80s music videos for the likes of Madonna and George Michael for inspiration. Were there any specific videos you were looking to emulate when putting this together?
Matt> Definitely. The other half of the music video is the idea that Devendra is performing directly for these paying fans in a kind of private way. (He later referenced it as an “Orwellian Only-Fans Subscription” which I thought was perfect). We wanted the behind-the-scenes of that performance to be decaying and sinister, but the actual performance to look glamorous. We both love those glossy 80s-90s music videos, and they were definitely references for us. “Freedom ‘90” is especially important to me and I think George Michael’s emotional state when making that video relates directly to our themes.
We weren’t necessarily trying to emulate the look precisely, but we brought that spirit into the stage performance section with glamorous lighting, smoke machines, wind machines, disco balls… basically everything we could throw at it.
LBB> Carrie, let’s talk about the casting process. What were you looking for in the performers, and how did you know when you’d found the right people?
Carrie> In this particular piece, we knew we wanted folks with interesting and diverse looks. We put out casting calls which filled a few of the positions, and filled a few more with folks we had worked with before or knew of. We knew we wanted to bring Hayden Pedigo into the mix because of how fun he was to collaborate with on his music video “Elsewhere”, in which we created a handful of characters with him.
Our other TV viewers were talented folks that we just knew would bring a lot to the characters to make them fun. We were incredibly lucky to find Leslie Langée. Her driver character really helped give a great intensity to the video, while also pairing so well with Devendra. Watching them play off one another was a highlight of the shoot, for sure.
LBB> When it came to getting the right performances out of the cast - including Devendra himself - how did you go about communicating the look and feel you were aiming for?
Matt> We worked hard at finding a singular cast that could deliver the tone we had in mind. Then, I shared the creative document with the locked cast, so they could see our influences, but really understand the emotions we wanted to evoke. I’d give them a simple sketch of their character and the situation. I was very confident we could give them the emotional context and trust them to do their work as actors.
Devendra and I didn’t have to talk about his performance much. We were on the same creative page from the beginning, so it was always just talking about small adjustments or opportunities. I think he’s too humble to admit what a great actor he is, but he’s such an empathetic and perceptive person that he got the dynamic right away. I also like to keep that kind of work really loose and open, so if there was an opportunity to improvise or adjust a character or scene that still worked towards our goal, we’d go for it.
Photo credit: Jackie Lee Young
When we began to shoot the actual stage performance on the set, I caught myself beginning to give Devendra my thoughts on how his vocal performance might look. Then I remembered the level of thoughtfulness and charisma this musician has. So, I just got out of the way and kept my mouth shut. Of course, he is such a thoughtful collaborator that he’d ask me if I was getting what I wanted after each take. He’s such a talented performer that each take was just lights-out. He’s undefeated if you need someone to burn a hole through your camera lens.
LBB> What was the biggest challenge you encountered during production, and how did you overcome it?
Matt> As usual with me, the biggest challenge is accomplishing the shot list and number of locations I want. It is a six-minute song, so I did feel a little more justified than usual, but that didn’t help the fact it was still pretty ambitious. I usually want music videos in this vein to feel like short films.
Specifically with this one, Devendra and I wanted it to feel like a cryptic trailer for a film. So, part of that means a wide variety of locations and characters. Carrie and I had to figure out the puzzle pieces of the time we had with Devendra, the amount of characters I had written into the story, locations for each character, extra lighting time inherent in a night shoot, and very specific car-mount footage on top of all of that. Luckily we got creative with some locations and our cast was incredibly kind about the time they could make themselves available to us.
Joe> The biggest challenge in the case of this video was the turnaround time. The day of delivery was just the 13th day since the shoot started. It was a three-day (or three-night) shoot with long hours into the early morning. I was the DIT on set and began preparing the edit as soon as I received the first clips of footage.
Although the footage came together organically we still had to sift through almost 10 hours of the stuff at the end of the shoot. Thankfully I received a lot of guidance from Matt, and we were able to get to an assembled starting place the day after the shoot wrapped.
Carrie> Outside of the normal budget constraints, Texas heat, never enough time, etc. that everyone runs into, this was a very ambitious project. It was a project that every department was stretched to the limit to pull off creatively. The look is incredibly stylized and it’s a very long song, which means lots of scenes, wardrobe, spaces to dress, and shots to ensure things don’t get over-used.
We simply overcame it because everyone on this set wanted to make something really cool. There was a lot of buy-in on the vision. No one was an island and everyone on the crew supported everyone else. There were times when the art dept was helping move light stands during company moves, our DIT ran playback, our 1st AC even helped move a piano. We were all there for the right reason, and I think that ultimately it shows. Nothing could have gotten in the way of this crew.
LBB> And Carrie, what was the process for location scouting for this music video? How did you know when you’d found the right spots?
Carrie> When you get a creative treatment and it’s really good, your imagination begins to flood with images. It’s a blessing and a curse because those places your imagination makes up in those moments have a way of sticking, but they also may not actually be real places that exist in nature. On this video we were incredibly lucky to have a really good mix of both locations we found (in some cases by just wandering around town at night) that were exactly what we all pictured and spaces that we were able to build out and dress to suit our needs.
LBB> Finally, if you had your time again, is there anything that you’d do differently?
Joe> I don't think I would do anything differently. There wasn't much time to experiment or try anything too crazy. And at the end of the day, that's not what this project called for. It just needed simple cutting from shot to shot at a pace that allowed the song to ride off into the night.
Matt> I’m sure it comes off as a very diplomatic answer about everything coming up roses, but I don’t think it could have gone better. I was very happy with the shoot. We were lucky with the crew, talent, locations, and so many elements. Well, I’m sure some of it was luck, but I think a lot of it was due to Devendra’s reputation. Just like me, other people jumped at the opportunity to work with him and we definitely all benefited from that.
Carrie> Likewise, I don’t think I would have done anything differently on this project. Somehow, all the right elements came together, and the things that we thought we wanted at first, and ended up thinking we were compromising on, somehow panned out way better than what I had imagined. That’s just the magic of the filmmaking process. The universe has a way of putting the right people in the right place at just the right time to make something really special, and I feel like that happened here.
