Phantogram – Fall in Love
2014 · Directed by Timothy Saccenti
193K Likes
Best comments
1.“Half the people in the comment section are like, 'I heard this in a porno.' I can't relate.”
More comments
- 2.“When the whole video is 'most replayed.'”
- 3.“Oh, nothing... just a millennial looking at my daughter's recent searches. I am proud.”
The story
Phantogram are Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter, a duo from Greenwich, New York, who make electronic rock on trip-hop bones. Fall in Love came out in December 2013 as the first single from their second album, Voices, and cracked the top 10 on the US alternative chart. Voices followed in February 2014 and reached number 11 on the Billboard 200.
Director Timothy Saccenti had already photographed the band three times. During a test shoot for the album cover, he projected graphics by coder Joshua Davis onto them, and that trick became the whole video. Saccenti and Davis wrote 56 small Processing programs that spit out random shapes and animation, a different result every run, and the band narrowed them to about 27. On set they ran the programs until a composition looked right, then filmed Phantogram playing on a rotating stage with the graphics thrown across their bodies and four different programs running behind them at points. Dots for the drums. Swirls for Sarah.
It was shot in one day, in black and white, on a RED monochrome camera at 4K. Saccenti wanted it to feel industrial, not nostalgic. They pushed the digital images through analog video synths and projectors just to watch them degrade, and most of the effects happened in camera. Saccenti called it a visual catharsis that builds to a breakthrough after the bridge. A breakup song, lit by a computer having a beautiful nervous breakdown.
