SPOON Music Video: Creative Approach

The Revelator-produced music video for Spoon’s new track Hot Thoughts has been gaining a lot of recognition lately and we couldn’t be happier. People like SPIN Magazine, Brooklyn Vegan, Pitchfork, and Rolling Stone have been saying some nice things about the video, so we thought this might be a good opportunity to share a little background on the making of one of our favorite new projects.

The video, which was shot during one of Spoon’s live shows during the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, TX, was directed by Revelator’s Matt Muir. Spoon performs “Hot Thoughts,” the lead single and title track off of their newly released album. From our initial discussions with the band and their management, the idea of a lo-fi approach was always at the forefront. Spoon was excited about the idea that they had a chance to curate and play a series of shows at an old Austin haunt of theirs, the now defunct “Old Emo’s.” During the SXSW festival, the band would be lovingly re-dubbing the club “Eno’s” in honor of their drummer, Jim Eno.

A big part of Revelator’s pitch to Spoon was the media format and the aesthetic that brings along with it. We pitched shooting the entire video on vintage VHS cameras, as well as Sony HiH8 camcorders, and then having the crowd capture stills with flash-enabled disposable film cameras. All edited together in a rough and jarring lo-fi pastiche that conveys the feeling of a pirated bootleg show from years ago. Here’s a little peak behind the process, in the form of a sample page from director Matt Muir’s general mood board, created to convey the visual aesthetic and tone influences for the music video.

We hope you enjoyed this little look behind the curtain about the creative approach to our lo-fi project, and can’t yell at you enough about how you should BUY THE NEW SPOON RECORD! (It’s great.)