Director Elliott Sellers has been on a roll this year. He’s established a style that combines beautiful live action footage with perfectly placed visual effects, like in the video for "Heart Heart Head" by Meg Myers. In this video, Meg gives an amazing performance, holding nothing back, as she drags a burning tree through the forest and is surrounded by VFX insects. We talked to Elliott about the video, Meg’s performance, and being forced by a SWAT team to change their shooting location.

Doug: The concept of the video seems to relate really well to the song. Was it based on the lyrics?

Elliott: It came from just meeting Meg and talking with her about what she had always thought of for it. They showed me the song and I think there was a weird connection that happened where I expressed exactly what she wrote it about. We went back and forth as far as the concept, and she told me some stuff that she'd wanted to do. She'd had some initial ideas, and it was something where I wanted to make sure we both were getting to do something we really wanted. I wanted to lend a really metaphoric sense about what the song meant to her and I think she wanted to just rip apart a visual performance and show people she's a serious artist. The bugs, the fire, the burden - all just ways we wanted to tell a story.

Doug: The burning tree imagery that you talk about is also being used as the cover for this single. You personally have also had a few videos come out now where trees feature heavily. Was the tree element something that you brought to the table? And were you conscious of its existence in your previous work as well?

Elliott: Trees are my David Lynch cheese. I love just everything about the concept of a tree, and the life and journey of a tree. There's so many things I've written, so many fucking tree treatments, It's ridiculous. I want each story to be very specific to not only what I'm trying to tell, but whatever that is through the artist. It should relate and have that relationship together. With Meg, there was a burden, this cross she had to bear, so to speak, and that worked to represent that. She was actually dragging this tree through the forests of California. It's vocally and physically going through it at the same time. I think she really had a fun time shooting it and letting out those performance with raw aggression. That's another crazy thing about Meg, she's sang every single line of every playback, the entire takes, everything. She never whispered it, or lip-synced it, or anything. She went that hard, every take, which was nuts! I've never seen an artist do that that many times with that much craze to it; was pretty rad.

Doug: You mentioned her singing 100% every performance, and that really comes across when watching the video. She's incredibly expressive throughout. Was that something that she just started doing, or were you ready for it?

Elliott: Absolutely. The first thing we actually shot together was in a pool at my friend Ben Kutsko's house. It's a total neighborhood, family street nice and quite - and she's legit screaming these words while basically drowning in this freezing cold pool! The neighbors are freaking out. I had no idea that it was going to be that big. She had told me, “I'm not going to be able to lip-sync or anything, I need to do it full out or it's just not going to feel right, I'm not going to get into it.” I just figured she was saying that to cover her ass, but she meant it 100%, which was fucking amazing to shoot!

Doug: Once you knew that she was going to do that, because it really features heavily in the video, was that something that you then tried to build on or add to?

Elliott: To be honest, I had no idea how she was going to perform based on other videos. The reason I worked with her, and the reason I met her, and pretty much the whole reason this all came about, was because I saw her live at Bardot. She was headlining and Alex Bittan (Atlantic Records) had told me they just signed Meg and that I "needed to see this girl live bro." Oddly enough, they wanted to do a different for song for Meg, and I really wanted my video for her to be something that was a real statement.When I saw her that night and she played “HHH” last, I pretty much wasn't watching her play, I was just writing notes in my phone as fast I could. When I got home, I wrote the video and Alex and I brought it up to her. When we met, I already had pretty much the video that I wanted to do thought out, but I wanted to add what she wanted. It was just a bonus that she's such an ill performer, because I couldn't have asked for more.

Doug: You mentioned specifically, in a Vimeo comment on this video, that the Alexa has ruined all other systems for you now and I'm curious why that is.

Elliott: I was a big Epic guy for a really long time, and I pretty much vowed that I would never use another camera. I tend to shoot everything I direct and I really care about what I'm shooting on and the Epic was just delivering for me right and left. Meg was the first video I did on Alexa and since then, I don't think I've done one without it. I think it's just something about the picture quality and just the comfort that you have, shooting what you need to shoot, knowing your exposure, trusting everything that it's going to be right when you bring it back, and just having that amazingly deep image to color and just go crazy on. Honestly, there's so many great things about the Epic, high frame rates, large formatting, but ultimately it just comes down to how you feel when you shoot something, and I never felt the way I felt when I was looking through the viewfinder. It blew me away. I love this camera, and I had a feeling it was going to happen. One of my favorite cinematographers, Roger Deakins, who will forever be the modest baller of the cinematic world, lately has been on Alexa for his past few features; it's just unreal to me. A guy that's been shooting film for 40 years, 50 years is now going to a digital format. That just speaks to the quality and dedication Arri has put into crafting the Alexa.

Doug: How did some of the effects work out? Is she just dragging a non-burning tree around?

Elliott: We shot in Calabasas and we were originally going to shoot in Big Bear, but the ending of our first day, we found out that Chris Dormer, the guy who was running from the cops, that cop killer guy that fled to Big Bear in that cabin, was in our film locations. A week prior I had scouted our locations that were about a half mile from where SWAT teams and all the local fire department were currently occupying! Terrifying and also hugely dismantling for the production. But it all worked out in the end, going to the beautiful Calabasas forests last minute. And yes, she is dragging the tree and we added fire in post. It sold better than I thought possible. Cameron Clark murdered the effects on it, every shot was more perfect and more beautiful than I ever imagined. From the bugs to the fire, he just surprises me every time on how flawless his first passes are.

Doug Klinger is the co-founder/content director of IMVDb and watches more music videos than anyone on earth. You can find him on twitter at @doug_klinger.