Creating the kind of music videos to make the darker fans of Fantasia proud, The 405 caught up with LA based director Alex Takacs, known best by his moniker Young Replicant. Thoughtful and subtle, with a flair for the supernatural streaks in everyday life, Alex's work with The xx, Lorde, M83, and Bonobo instills a deeply atmospheric and haunting visual feast to accompany the sounds of each artist.
405: Can you break down your influences growing up?
Young Replicant: I credit my a particular shelf of my family's library for having made a strong early impression. There was a huge back catalogue of Cinefex magazines from the eighties to the early 2000s. Each issue had detailed breakdowns of the most effects heavy movies at the time so it spanned from animatronics and trick photography to the birth of serious CGI. I'm not as big on special effects in my work these days but the write-ups gave me perspective on how complex visual ideas and problems were solved. Next to the Cinefexes was the original uncensored Ghost in a Shell, some random volumes of Akira, a massive copy of H.R. Giger's Nercronomicon, a hardbound book on alchemy, and '90s cyberpunk comics. I spent a lot of time with those.
Another big part of my childhood was this amazing video store on La Brea called Rocket Video. It was my first taste of Ray Harryhousen, the original Godzilla movies, Terry Gilliam. My first David Lynch experience was when they played Dune on the jumbo TV. I remember looking up from the kids section to see the Bene Geserit crying tears of blood because they don't have enough body moisture. By the time I was old enough to really appreciate Rocket Video it had moved across the street to a smaller location and then eventually went out of business. They replaced it with a dog hotel.
405: Formal education vs. School of Hard Knocks?
YR: I'm technically a film school reject turned advocate of a non-film school education, so there's some bias when I say hard knocks. But I'd be surprised if there are many directors working in music videos who would argue otherwise. My experience has always been that school is what you make of it — a 100k undergrad program with an extensive alumni network is not going to make someone a filmmaker if it's not in them already. I think it's just as important for filmmakers to be dipping into art theory, design, history, and psychology.
405: How did you engineer your first big break?
YR: In 2008 M83 had a music video competition on youtube where people made their own videos and posted them — an early experiment in crowdsourcing that I doubt would be as well received nowadays. It was my first year of college and it was a exciting excuse to make something. I rounded up some friends and we made the video that ended up winning. It didn't lead to big things straight away, but it broke the ice. I actually know a few other great directors who got started with that competition.
405: How does each idea take shape for you now - whats the osmosis process / do you have any consistent forms of inspiration?
YR: I have a loose ritual that I follow but since each project is different, the research process tends to take on a life of it's own after a while. I write by hand, type, play the song over lots of different visuals. I try to avoid digging too deeply into an artist's online persona because it can generate a long list of don'ts, conditions and things to avoid. For me, it's important to find ways to bypass self censorship and cynicism.
Verbalizing is also a really big part of my process — I feel like there's something that happens to your train of thought when you're speaking versus when you're mulling things over in silence. While the monkey part of your brain is preoccupied with stringing together crude mouth sounds, the rest of your mind is doing all kinds of unconscious work. It's like when you catch yourself in the middle of a sentence and your not sure what you're gonna say next but it just spills out anyway. There's a voice emanating from an inner blind spot and its bound to have some good ideas.
405: Bonobo's 'First Fires' is such an enduring piece, and it really complements the Lorde video by being an interesting counterpoint. What is it you're working on now?
YR: Thanks. I've got a couple narrative projects developing, a new music video and short documentary about house music in Los Angeles.
405: Kan Wakan's 'Like I Need You' featured fantastic hints of a narrative beneath the performance elements.
YR: The band and I were close to working together a couple times so it was fun to finally get the chance. We shot the video over two nights around the docks in San Pedro. I wanted play with genre a bit and build an underworld that hadn't necessarily been seen before.
Written and Interview conducted by ELSA BISHOP. First published in longer form on The 405 and appearing here with permission.
It's OK if it takes you a couple minutes to realize this is genius. And it helps to know the backstory, although figuring it out youself is probably more fun. And the song is called "Figure It Out" after all...
But, if you're the type who loves a spoiler, here ya go:
Director Ninian Doff creates a nifty hidden image trick thanks to a specal blue/red filter placed in front of the lens. Yes, it bathes all the footage in either red or blue, but more importantly: The filter only reveals certain colors. Think of it like old-fashioned red/cyan anaglyph glasses, except instead of creating the illusion of 3D, Doff is revealing hidden messages and images. It's the same gag you've seen in various red reveal tricks you've seen in board games and elsewhere, but transported to video.
Oh, and by the way: You'll notice the video starts with a Parental Advisory warning. So, don't get too distracted by the tricks, otherwise you might forget to miss out on the bloody narrative fun.
It's clear from the start that today won't be a good day for the young man in this new J. Cole video. Director Sam Pilling plays with that palpably impending doom, twisting the storyline into a climax that's as emotionally devastating as can be for our hero.
Cleaning the garage ain't so boring when you find an old virtual reality machine. Also not boring is the end credit sequence, which is presented as an old-school video game.
UK boy band Rixtonmight not have the budgets of bigger stars, but they have an idea. Actually, they have other people's ideas. The boys take the lo-fi piss out of some of the past year's most memoriable videos — yes, of course there's a Wrecking Ball and Blurred Lines, but also clips by Rihanna, Bieber, Gaga and Katy — before stumbling upon a mass make-out concept that suits them just fine.
Mykki Blanco — who EW describes as "multi-gendered" — is a perfect subject for this literally two-faced video concept that plays like an alien version of Fight Club.
Passions burn and then get doused — or perhaps merely reborn — in this beautiful clip by Young Replicant that grabs the song's metaphor and creates a fully-realized, yet still imagistic story to represent it.
You likely met Mikey Ekko as Rihanna's duet partner on "Stay." His solo video has a similarly haunting vibe as director Sam Pilling shows him in danger of literally fading away in a glamorously trashed home.
Just when you think this video can be easily summed up as "Darwin Deez photobombs a series of cheesy commercial shots," director Keith Schofield takes it to someplace much less simple. The basic structure doesn't change, but it turns out that lonely Darwin is alternately exploding in rage and mourning each phase of love that he'll miss out on as a single dude. Not to give away any spoilers in this fantastically lunatic clip, but he doesn't seem to get lucky in the end, although he does get his aggression out. And that manatee does look pretty cute.
