Sarah Park

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Figure Out This Wickedly Clever Royal Blood Video (Ninian Doff, dir.)

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.

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Bayside "Time Has Come" (WATTS, dir.)

Committing perpetual suicide to create the world's greatest pasta sauce. The Oujia board smells of gasoline. Don't get too cuddly with the teddy bear. What's lurking in the baby pool? He only snorts the albino rats.

Captured in photos in Canoga Park, California. WATTS cast themselves and friends to pull the various stunts and tricks cluttered throughout the video. Enjoy forwards or backwards. Grip tightly, breathing in short bursts.

In Depth

Solving the Placebo "Too Many Friends" Video with Director Saman Kesh

Placebo "Too Many Friends" is one of those great videos that can be easily summed-up in a couple bullet-points to a newbie — it's narrated by author Bret Easton Ellis and ends with a quiz — but also stands up to repeated viewings and close studies. The video is a mystery, but also a critique about how we've been lulled into submission by our digital devices and the well-chose pharmaceutical.

We recently chatted with director Saman Kesh via email about how the video came together, the irony of it all, and what it means — including how the video is slyly, if a bit coincidentally connected to The Dark Knight Rises.

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Placebo "Too Many Friends" (Saman Kesh, dir.)

Narrator Bret Easton Ellis — yes, the dude who wrote Less Than Zero — and director Saman Kesh (aka Saman Keshavarz) explore the anatomy of a seemingly simple scene that reveals itself to be far more complex upon closer inspection. But the moral here isn't the unreliability of perception; it's the danger of relying on technology and drugs that actually amplify, instead of serving our desires and fears. 

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Atmosphere "Ain't Nobody" (Carmela Makela, dir.)

Atmosphere - Ain't Nobody

In an ideal world, the two cold vixens in this video would become a new generation's version of the "Addicted To Love" babes. If anything, these ladies seem a lot easier to hang out with than the Palmerettes, happy to lounge and spread their legs while the boys do what boys like to do. Which is much more chaste than it sounds.