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CHRISTINA HENDRICKS FELL TO EARTH
Via Pitchfork comes this video for Broken Bells’ “The Ghost Inside,” directed by Jacob Gentry and starring Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks. As part of their “Director’s Cut” series, they interview today the director of this haunting sci-fi critique of our glamour-obsessed culture.
Pitchfork: This looks like a pretty big production for a relatively small band like Broken Bells.
Jacob Gentry: A lot of people say it looks big and expensive, but it wasn’t by any stretch. The special effects in the video were limited to things that could’ve been done in the late 70s or early 80s. I knew I couldn’t compete with Star Trek or Transformers in terms of effects, scale, and scope, and that wasn’t necessarily something that I’d want to do. At this point, people have seen everything, so I wanted to make a lateral move that garnered a different response. It’s almost like choosing to record a song in analog in 2010 because you like the sound of it. There’s a feel to those older effects that’s way more interesting than the ones now.
Pitchfork: Were you inspired by any specific science fiction films?
JG: Sure, Ridley Scott’s Alien and Blade Runner were important. I wanted to create that classical science fiction where the technology was almost vintage. There’s a beat up quality to it. The way that we photographed the spaceships was done using motion control and models– almost exactly the same way they did in Star Wars. I wanted it to make it where you could see the seams. Growing up as a kid, seeing the edges of a movie revealed how they were made, and that was part of the fun for me.
