This is a music video for Kele Okereke, the singer of Bloc Party, in his debut single “Tenderoni.”  Directed by Greko Sklavounos, we shot this in the course of a day in April on a sound stage in Hollywood.  Greko was going for the clean, cold look, simple with strong, highly formal composition.  Think Tron, with a little bit of Nike/Gatorade ads mixed in.  No grit to be seen here — just as clean and pristine as we could make it.  We had a lightning round of prep two weeks before production, when it all came together very quickly through Greko’s hard work, when he brought me on.  We storyboarded like crazy and met daily for the next two weeks.

We used the Red for most of the video, with a little bit of help from the Photron (an ultra-high-speed camera).  Even with a battery of lights at our disposal, we were fighting pretty hard to get exposure the whole day because of the softness that we wanted, as well as the heavy blue gel.  To make the glow effect work, though the suggestion of our wonderful production designer Ethan Feldbau, we used Scotchbrite for the white strips, then used an enormous LED ringlight from the direction of camera to make them pop.

I also owe an enormous debt to our colorist Steven Drypolcher, who slaved for days to make those strips really glow and give the video the sheen it needed.

Prod. Jason Baum

Dir. Greko Sklavounos
Cine. Aaron Scott Moorhead
Prod. Design Ethan Feldbau
Costume Design NOVA
1AD Colin Duffy
Gaffer Bob Low

1AC Evan Harbuck
Color Steven Drypolcher
Label Polydor Records