Dark and sexy, the video for "Desire" by Meg Myers is a twisted take on a romantic relationship that goes to some pretty ghostly and unexpected places while managing to avoid campiness. It's full of unnerving images, eerie effects, and a fantastic performance from Meg that is equal parts innocent, intense, and unholy. We talked to director Jordan Bahat about working with Meg on the video, establishing a sinister but sexy energy, and coordinating the VFX.

Doug: This is a pretty sexy song, but it's got a dark, twisted edge to it. Was it a goal to mirror that vibe in the video?

Jordan: Well, maybe to backtrack, the core concept of the video was developed before I came aboard.

I had seen Meg’s video for "Heart Heart Head" that Elliott Sellers shot, and that was how I first came across her music. When you hear her music - it’s this crazy, manic voice capable of such aggression - and then you see her and it’s a complete surprise. She’s small and girlish and vulnerable - but then when she performs, you realize that she’s in complete control. That’s what really interested me at the beginning.

So, I reached out through her website and said I’d love to work with her. Not-that-long story short we met up and I got to hear the song for the first time. Meg, Andy (her producer and manager), and Andy’s wife Elizabeth function like a small, creative family and they’d already come up with this idea of Meg having sex with an invisible man. So, with that as a starting point, I knew that the video would definitely mimic the song’s more sexual energy. The question was more about, on a tonal level, what is her relationship with this invisible man? Is she in control? Does she know him? Does he force himself? Does she enjoy it? All that…

I did want to craft the video around the tone of the song - and I wanted to use Meg’s girlish qualities to play with the audience’s expectations. So maybe at the beginning of the video, it seems maybe she’s in danger. Like an unsuspecting horror movie victim. And then, later in the video, there’s a shift and she seems to be in control. And she’s been there before. And maybe this whole thing is a kind of role-play. That was the idea anyway.

I think there will be some obvious comparisons to Fiona Apple’s "Criminal" video with the overall tone and that’s OK by me. It wasn’t the starting point - but it certainly came up a few times because it’s such a touchstone video, it’s hard to avoid.

Doug: What kind of input did Meg have on the video?

Jordan: Meg definitely had a lot of input. As opposed to most videos, we really took our time in developing the idea together - we talked every component through down to the color of the lamps and the texture of the TV skew FX.

We knew the video would feature some more intimate moments, so it was important to have the time to get to know each other. I think it’s way easier to ask somebody to strip down to their underwear if you’ve actually met them before.

Also - with the restraints of the project in mind, it was super important that we had every beat ironed out before the shoot. It was nice to do it that way because, once we were on set, we could just get to work and trust each other.

So I prepped it in frame forge previz just to be super certain we knew what we were doing. You can check it out here.

A page from Jordan's treatment

Doug: You focus on the TV at a pretty key moment in the video. What were all of the clips taken from? What's the background behind the cartoon that you use?

Jordan: Even though the initial concept was Meg having sex with an invisible man - I was a lot less interested in actually trying to simulate that… I think if we tried to show that, it would become instantly comedic. Can you imagine?

So I was more interested in setting up the scene and creating tension - and leaving what’s next to the imagination.

Regarding the cartoons, I wanted to manipulate the line between her innocent look and the kind of dangerous environment. So the cartoon clips all worked to that end… Contrasting more wholesome imagery (albeit, still creepy cartoons from the 50s and early 60s) with something darker going on in the room.

I took a lot of cartoon clips from a sequence about a pack of wolves capturing a lamb and cooking it for dinner. And another clip of a bunch of ants being thrown into a sandwich and then being chewed up. Those felt thematically relevant.

There’s also this little cartoon moment where the wolf is setting the dinner table and the plates all flip into the air and hover there for a beat. I liked placing that in the cut to foreshadow the floating sequence. Not sure if anyone ever notices stuff like that but details like that are part of the fun.

Doug: Meg's outfit in the video manages to toe a line between sexy and innocent. What was behind the wardrobe choice?

Jordan: That’s exactly what we were trying to do. That contrast was something we aimed to play with in every part of the video technically. Even when it came to the lighting design, I worked with Wheels (Andrew Wheeler) to establish an image with a lot of inherent contrast, but with soft source lighting that also kind of makes the space feel weirdly inviting.

Wardrobe-wise she’s wearing this oversized sweatshirt with a big teddy bear on it, but it’s ripped and she’s not wearing any pants. And she’s wearing these loose socks. It was all very intentional to set-up this innocent character towards whom we might have unholy thoughts.

Doug: How did you guys achieve all of the floating effects?

Jordan: There were a couple ways to consider, but given our limitations we decided to just have actors in green-suits support Meg’s body. My friend Jon who is actually a very good, trained actor played one of them. They pull her sweatshirt overhead and then she falls back into their arms. It was a challenge to coordinate all that in a way that looked fairly natural, and didn’t absolutely kill us with unnecessary roto work.

Shahriar Rahman, who I’ve worked with on the videos for Twenty One Pilots, Fitz and the Tantrums, and Panic! At The Disco, supervised the VFX on-set and also executed the VFX shots. I think he’d tell you that, despite our best efforts, those floating effects required a ton of love in post.

Likewise, he designed by hand all the glitching/skewing during the moment we cut to the TV during the guitar solo. He’s a champion.

Doug: I know Meg likes to really bring it in her music video performances, did performing while being held up by people in green suits interfere with her performances at all?

Jordan: It’s true, once Meg starts performing she really goes for it. We tried to rein in some moments towards the beginning of the video, so she could sing while still performing as an actor inside the scene (as separate from the pure performance set-ups) - and that took a little work to pull together. Once the music is going it’s natural to default to being the musician/performer and maybe not the character in the scene. But she went for it and I think she did so well.

When she’s floating, I think that actually was slightly easier in regards to performing in a natural way because she was actually physically being held up in the air. She didn’t have to recreate the scene in her imagination or mime anything.

The harder part I think was coordinating the green men and choreographing her body movements in a way that looked natural and comfortable. That definitely took some imagination.

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.