Jellyfish Laundromat

goldfrapp:

Director: Legs
Legs are Geremy Jasper and Georgie Greville

- How did this job come to you?

- Alison Goldfrapp liked the Florence and The Machine video we made a few months ago and through Rokkit and our reps at OB Management asked us to take a crack at writing a script for “Alive.”

- Was there a creative brief given to you? Whose concept was it? How involved were Goldfrapp?

- There was no real brief just a few guidelines - Goldfrapp wanted dancers, a performance, and a narrative. Because the song is so infectiously happy and bright we knew we had to place it in a dark and demonic world. We took an old, amazing concept that Georgie had about Norwegian Black Metal heads doing aerobics that Geremy reworked it into a narrative mixing Olivia Newton John with rainbow blood sucking sex nymphs and a neon coffin. Alison loved it from the start and was very involved with her look but gave us considerable freedom and trust with all the other elements of the production.

- There are a lot of things going on - vampires, girls who look they are right out of The 20 Minute Workout, Lasers – tell me about bringing all these elements together.

- With this video we were able to mix up a ton of ideas and genres that have been major interests of ours. Georgie’s been obsessed with the absurd sexuality of The 20 Minute Workout and the darkest of all musical forms for years and Geremy’s been jonesing to make a psychedelic horror movie. Because of the sound of the song we framed it in a Xanadu-esque neon+laser/ new-age church setting with Busby Berkley inspired choreography. The more visual ideas we threw into the pot the more excited the crew that worked on the piece got. It’s a classic tale of good versus evil where at the end the roles are reversed- the Goth guys are virgins who are sacrificed to keep Alison “Alive.”

- It looks like most of it was created in-camera - yes?

- Yes, we tried to get as much in camera as possible. We set many different lighting looks for Alison’s stage and were choreographing the lighting changes live while we were shooting, which gave the footage incredible energy. The smoke machines were like Dante’s Inferno. Also, Ross McLennan, our DP was a wizard with Alison’s beauty lighting and really made the set come to life better than we could have ever imagined. That being said we did do a lot of fun post stuff with Absolute- laser beams, fang transformation and the Grateful Dead inspired rainbow blood.

- How many shoot days was it. Can you tell me about the fun & challenges of the shoot?

- It was one long shoot day with much mania and magic. The morning was hilarious transforming these very handsome well mannered English boys into leather clad black metal jazzercisers. The smoke and colored lights and amazing choreography made it feel like a Halloween party on a Duran Duran video set. As we got later into the night the scene got more surreal, especially during the girls‘ vampire transformations. There was a lot of blood, gyrating, scary faces and g-strings running around. By the time we got to Alison laying in the neon coffin she was hamming it up with her gold fangs and didn’t want to stop.

- How would you describe this video in under 140 characters?

- Goldfrapp leads Black Metal heads through sexed up aerobics - they are joined by neon nymphs who seduce and sacrifice them for rainbow blood.

- Anything else I should know?

- Major respect to our editor Paul Snyder at Lost Planet who was hit by a bus, broke his wrist and edited the video with one hand. We raise our glasses.