behind the teeth (an exploration of a music video) (Patreon)

HEY.

so wanted to give you guys a quick glimpse into the thought process behind the 'between my teeth' music video, which you can watch here! check out the attached PDF for Ewen's original pitch.

it was made by a guy called Ewen Farr  who I found after putting the song on a site called creative commission. I knew a couple of things about this video..

1) I didn't want to be in it. the I GO CRAZY video was so ORLA-HEAVY that I wanted to duck out of this one.. but I wanted to be animated. lol

2) I wanted it to feel creepy / uneasy

3) I wanted there to be lots of MOUTHS.

Ewen suggested he animate over old archived stock footage of dentists' appointments. as we worked on it together a loose narrative started to poke through - over the course of the video the menacing dentists would attempt to remove the heart from between the patient's teeth. duh. 

this song is about balancing the weight of someone's emotional dependency on you..balancing the urge to help with the urge to run away. I toyed early on about the idea of a plot-based video, some live footage and narrative of a couple/friendship under strain.. but it all felt so literal / too obvious. removing a heart from between teeth felt literal in a whole other way.. like taking the metaphor right on the surface, an idea I was weirdly drawn to.

Ewen's style was creepy.. childlike but made me feel uneasy + uncomfortable. perfect. over the course of a few weeks we bounced ideas back and forth, chose the stock footage together and refined the animation. fun fact - I shot a video of myself singing it all the way through which Ewen used to animate the singing orla in the chorus ! that original video is lols.

hope you guys like the vid, would love to hear your feedback

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