When director Isaac Rentz started to assemble the cast for Tegan and Sara’s “Closer” music video, it was important to him that they feel like real people on camera. Pulling inspiration from TV shows like My So-Called Life, and even moments from Tegan and Sara’s life growing up, Isaac creates a carefree atmosphere in the video by doing his best to create a safe environment for the performers to be themselves. We talked to Isaac about the video, about creating that safe environment, and about DIY motion control. 

Doug: How did the size of this video compare to some of the other videos you did this year?

Isaac: I think this was the lowest budget music video I did this year. I wasn’t sure we’d be able to pull off the idea at first, but I’ve always liked Tegan and Sara, so I just went for it. It’s frustrating when I have to make a lot of concessions on a video, like if I can't shoot on the camera I want or I have to settle for a shorter shot list. But I love Tegan and Sara. I listened to them a lot when I was in college, and I thought the track was cool. They came to me and said, "We've never done a proper looking music video. All our music videos are very concept driven, very artistic, very arts and crafts.” They wanted to keep it edgy but do something that introduced them to an audience outside of their fan base. I love that challenge. When I first starting doing music videos, like, 3 years ago, I came from that school of thought that shooting performance footage was boring or cliché. If a brief came from a label that said I didn’t have to put the band in the video, that was a plus. I think that's changed for me over the last year and a half, to where that's actually one of the things I get most excited about. And honestly, the main reason I watched music videos when I was a kid was because I wanted to see what my favorite bands were really like. I remember seeing Beastie Boys’ videos and thinking, "aw man! I wanna hang out with those guys!" It's probably one of the most powerful things you can do with a video. You don't have to do something complicated and full of special effects. Sometimes it's just figuring out how to create a distinct world for the artist and letting them be themselves in it.

Doug: About them being themselves, I read a quote from Sara where she said a lot of the concepts of this video were based on people from her and Tegan’s childhood. Was there a brief that included stuff about their childhood, or did you work on the treatment together, how did that all workout?

Isaac: The song is about capturing the feeling of young love, so I wrote a treatment that tried to show how that feeling is universal. I had this effect going where we were going to follow one couple and use motion control to turn them into all kinds of different couples every time they touched. It was a lot sexier originally. I talked to Tegan and Sara about it and they said, "we love the idea, but when we were kids, we never felt cool or sexy. It was a bunch of awkward people hanging out together." At one point Tegan said, "at parties we'd just go in the backyard and jump up and down on the trampoline." So I switched gears a little and tried to embrace that awkwardness. We cast real people, which I think was really important, and we tried to come up with scenes that made the passion and excitement feel innocent. I didn't want characters ripping each other’s clothes off, and for kids in the suburbs to watch it and say, "oh, that's cool looking, but it's not something that I would experience in my life." Tegan and Sara wanted to incorporate a lot of things that they did as kids growing up. Making forts and silly stuff, as apposed to motifs out of a CK One ad. We talked a lot about My So-Called Life, Freaks and Geeks, and Girls, and the way that those shows portray youth and sex. They’re still sexy, but the people in it feel like they could actually be your friends in real life.

Doug: I've seen My So-Called Life referenced a few times when reading about this video. Where there any direct references that you guys used from that show in the video?

Isaac: Not like directly, from an episode or anything. But we were trying to channel that spirit. I guess the look of the video is kind of influenced by My So-Called Life. Using a lot of softer colors, I don't know if it occurs to anybody as their watching it. We went for a softer, early 90s, pastels look. We tried out a bunch of different colors and patterns to make sure it had the right atmosphere.

Doug: With the casting, did you also try to reflect that same vibe with the people you picked?

Isaac: I'm always looking for people who have a real presence on camera. You can find a million symmetrical looking people with chiseled abs or whatever. It's more difficult to find people that I can put in front of the camera and they have an intangible quality that makes you want to watch them. We weren't trying to cast anyone that looked like they were from My So-Called Life, but I think it might have gotten into my subconscious while we were picking people. Also, on our budget, we had to find people who were willing to hang out with us all day for practically no money. So that influenced our casting too.

Doug: On the technical side, how did you guys achieve that motion control effect?

Isaac: When I first pitched the video, we went to a motion effects company and they told us that if we did it the right way with their machines and their technicians, that we'd probably get about 2 to 3 shots, which was about 1/8 of what I wanted. I had to figure out how to achieve the same effect without any money. I worked with Zak Stoltz, who's done effects on tons of videos- he's a young guy and probably one of the smartest people I know as far as the technical aspects of shooting videos. We spent three days at my production company’s office trying out different ways of trying to imitate motion control. We shot all these ridiculous tests where I was the actor, and would put on 15 different t-shirts to try to differentiate myself in each take, and then do the same thing over and over again. I'd pick up the same glass of water, then spin, and then leave the frame… 50 times. After shooting that stuff, we finally came to the realization that if the person who’s pushing our camera on the dolly track marched to a metronome, they could pretty much do the same speed every time. We also realized that if we used circular dolly track, we'd be able to control the range of the motion. If I were shooting some really technical scene with compositing, I'd never want to rely on that method, but it worked really well for this and I think it helped our performances. A motion control rig is intimidating. It's filled with computers and all this gear. I think when we put our subjects in the middle of a dolly track with a simple camera on it, it really opened them up and we got honest performance from people. I don’t know if we would have gotten that honesty we’d used this loud, monster of a machine and sent it whizzing around them.

Doug: This question is based on a picture you posted that included the caption “trying to convince Sara to jump on the trampoline for 30 more takes.” This photo got me wondering about the potential stresses involved with a video like this. Despite this being a video full of people partying and having fun, are there still stresses involved with trying to shoot it?

Isaac: I think there is a misconception that all you have to do is put a bunch of good-looking people in a room and it’ll come out looking fun. I feel like I can tell when I watch a video if those situations feel forced. It was really important to me that we set up an atmosphere that helped the actors feel like they were with a group of friends. That’s one of my biggest rules on every set, I just feel like it's so awful when you hear about a director yelling at actors, or yelling at his crew, or getting frustrated and blowing up. You're making the set a less creative place when you do that. I want people to feel like they can fail. That's one of the most important things for me on set. There’s an awesome shot in this video where two girls kiss, toward the end of the bridge. I never specifically asked for them to kiss because I was afraid it would look forced if it were an “official” direction. They were able to do that because they felt safe on set. They felt like they could do something and I wouldn't immediately scream, "cut! That all wrong!.” I think we got a sincere performance from Tegan and Sara because they felt like they didn’t have to worry about messing up. When you watch the video, you get a sense of who they really are - two twin sisters who have grown up together and have a real friendship. It looks authentic. If we had been on a set where they felt constricted or were afraid to try something embarrassing, I don't think we would have gotten that feeling across in the same way. Sara in particular; she just did totally random, crazy stuff. I asked her, "what would you do if you were singing this song to yourself in the mirror when you were 15?" That’s what the song sounds like to me. That's not the right tone for some videos, but for this one that's all I wanted to see.

Doug: And how do you achieve something like that? To create that atmosphere in the final product?

Isaac: I’m just obsessed with getting the right tone across. Whenever I watch a video, that’s the first thing I look for. You can have all kinds of cool art direction or seamless camera moves, but if the tone isn’t right, it’s like nails on a chalkboard. Part of it comes from working with people who understand that. My DP, Morgan Susser will turn to me sometimes and tell me if he feels like something feels false. We spend a lot of time asking ourselves, “Does this feel honest?”

Doug: Can you tell us about the edit? Was it a difficult process?

Isaac: I worked with Eric Greenburg, and he was open to trying a million things until we nailed the tone, which was a long process. At the end of our last editing session he showed me that he’d saved something like 80 different timelines for this video. Every time we changed the edit we’d have to change the motion effect, so he would have to completely re-edit those sections. Credit to Warner Bros and to Tegan and Sara, too, they let us work on that video for way longer than most labels or bands would let you. At one point, the label even said, "it's done, give it to us! We're ready to put it out." And I said, "No, it's not! Give us another week." And they did, which is rare.

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.