Video Chats: Austin Peters on 'Forever' and 'Don't Save Me' by Haim

We’re all inspired by Destiny’s Child in one way or another, it just manifests differently from each of us. For director Austin Peters and the girls from Haim, it came through in location and dance move choices in their videos for “Forever” and “Don’t Save Me.” In these videos, we get to enjoy Haim as they ride mopeds, play basketball, and relive their favorite 90s music videos. We talked to Austin about working with Haim, going through their old home movies, and Destiny’s Child chorography.

Doug: How did you get involved with Haim?

Austin: They’re old friends of mine, I’ve known them for many years. They were in some of my first videos I made as extras, and they played music with lots of my friends and we were just pals. They came to New York and played a show and we just started talking after that, because they’re from LA where I’m originally from, and they just put out that they just finished this EP and I said, “Hey, let’s make a video” and they said, “Yeah, great idea!” They were totally sweet and awesome about it and said, “Dude, we love your videos. Let’s do this.”

Doug: What’s the collaboration process with them like? Do they give you the keys and let you handle the whole video side of it, or are they more involved than that?

Austin: It’s been different every time. For the first one we were kicking around ideas, and they said, “OK, we have these mopeds and we want to ride around on mopeds." I said, “OK, cool.” Also, we didn’t have any money to make that video so I was thinking of how we could bring all these disparate elements together. With every video that I’ve made with them, we ultimately always start out trying to make an old R&B video because that’s what we all love. They love that and I love that, and obviously we’ve had lots of other influences to their music and obviously to me as a filmmaker as well. Something about this just felt right. We just said, “Let’s do a Destiny’s Child video." They had a few ideas and they said, “We know you love home movies. We have all these home movies,” which was like a gold mine, obviously because they have videos of their whole lives. I’ve waded through half their lives on VHS tape. Also obviously the bikers stunting and that bit is an homage to the DMX "Ruff Ryders Anthem" video, which is another video of that era that we grew up seeing on TV.

Doug: Did they just give you a stack of VHS home movies?

Austin: Yeah. Basically they said, “Our dad has all these tapes and you could just use them.” He gave me like four tapes or something, and I just captured them all and just went through them, finding my favorite moments, and seeing their childhood. It was funny, during the editing process they came to New York to play a show and they were like, “Austin, oh man, it’s so great to see you. How is everything?” And I said, “The truth is I haven’t not seen you for one day this whole time. I have been seeing you guys every day. Not only have I been seeing you, but I've been seeing your childhood self, and your parents, and your aunts and uncles. I’ve never left you. I’ve been here this whole time.” Their dad, Moti, gave me all of these videos, and he was really supportive of the whole thing. We just captured them and got them back to him obviously for their family archives. Then we just cut them into the video.

Doug: You mentioned where the bike and mopeds ideas came from in the "Forever" video, where did the basketball idea come from in the "Don't Save Me" video?

Austin: The process of conceiving that video was way different because things had really changed for them. When we made that first video is was just a bunch of pals hanging out and making a video. Where then suddenly there was a record label involved, and suddenly there was all this pressure to make a good video. Meanwhile, they’re working on an album, and focusing on music, so I was bouncing a lot of ideas of them we had a couple different ideas and then they just said, “We want to do a basketball video.” That’s what they ended up coming with. “We really want to do a basketball video," and I just said, “Cool.” We came up with all these basketball videos that we loved, like the first Aaliyah video "Back & Forth," which she did when she was 16 or something, and it’s all basketball. It’s all in a dark basketball court and that’s where we took inspiration for the lighting and stuff for that video. Then also "Baby, One More Time" was another big one, that first Brittany Spears video where she’s on the basketball court dancing and there’s all these strobes going off. I thought I would take that affect and amplify it, make the strobes go off even more irregularly and make it more strange. But, that’s what it was. It was really just them saying, “We want to do a basketball game. We want to play. We want to do us versus the boys” Which I started thinking was this nice metaphor for them as a whole. That they’re playing with the boys and end up balling up on them, and the guys play rough. No one plays easy on them, and that’s very much how it is in their career.

Doug: So when you pitched the concept of them getting booshed to the face with basketballs, did you frame it in that perspective?

Austin: Not really. We honestly went through so many drafts of what the treatment was going to be like because they were so busy working on their recording and stuff. There was just so many things going on, and they’re just very busy girls. We were bouncing back all these ideas and we came to something that was very much like the first one which was that we want to make a video that was like these 90s R&B videos that we grew up watching and really loving. Videos that were so informative when we were like 10, 11, and 12 years old. That’s what all those things came from. Them getting hit in the face was something that I added along the way to just push it further, take it out of that realm of something that you’ve seen before and make it maybe something that you haven’t. Alana was really insistent about how she wanted to spit blood. She kept telling me that that was something that she really wanted to do, and I said, “OK, well we’ll figure that out. We’ll do that.”

Doug: There’s a subtle humor that exists in those moments like that, and it exists in both the videos. Is that part of their personality? Is that something that you’re bringing to the video? How do those elements find their ways into the videos, those humorous elements?

Austin: I think it’s part of both of our personalities. The Haim girls are really, really funny. They tell jokes, and they have great, huge personalities, and I think that really comes through in the video. To me, there’s nothing I hate more than when I watch a video than I feel like the artist is taking themselves way too seriously. But, I get it. Some artists are really serious, and I totally understand and sympathize with that, but I just don’t want to make a video - especially not for them - where it felt like they were trying to be cooler than anybody, or they were trying to be super-serious, or trying to be super-cool, because that’s not who they are. They like to have fun, and they’re not pretentious. What I love about this video is that’s really just them. That is who they are, and I think they come through in them, and I feel proud of doing something where I think that that was the case.

Doug: In addition to the subtle humor in the video there is also some subtle choreography in there. Does that come from trying to recreate some of these Destiny’s Child style videos?

Austin: That’s how it started out. It was really we were bouncing these ideas. "We have mopeds. We have home movies." I told them “You guys are going to play in your house because it’s amazing that you grow up in this house together in the valley." Then that particular setup was inspired by this Destiny’s Child video, "Bills, Bills, Bills." I had this idea to shoot something where they’re in a hair solon and they’ll be singing and dancing and stuff, but instead of like a big $100,000 hair salon set, it would be in just a normal hair salon. It was just in the neighborhood, which is just where we ended up. It was a great hair salon, and those people were very nice to let us shoot there, but it’s not a set and we didn’t build it. It’s real. I remember coming to them when we all had a meeting, when I first got back to LA, about what we were going to do for the video. I said, “I want to do this setup where you guys are in this hair salon singing and dancing," and I didn’t know what they were going to say and they were like, “Oh, yeah. We’re totally up for that.” They were immediately on board. They were like, “Great." When we shot that, I remember thinking to myself that this is just crazy enough to work. We didn’t really know what that was going to be like, but I just said, “All right guys, dance," and they were like - boom - immediately dancing. Everything was totally just made up on the spot, but the only thing that we talked about was that we really wanted to do that one move which was from the "Say My Name" video. It was sort of was just like "Well, this is the perfect place to do it. Let’s just do it." We did that move and that was the only thing that we had really talked about at all before. Not that we had rehearsed it or anything until then, but we knew that we wanted to do that move.

Doug: There is a similar moment in the second video as well. Was that more of a call back to the first one?

Austin: Yeah. When that "Forever" video came out, people really responded really, really well to that part - to them being in the salon dancing because it’s not what you expect from a band. When you see Haim live you go, “Oh my God, these girls shred.” They can all play the shit out of their instruments and are insanely talented musicians, and you’re really blown away by how great they are as musicians and how tight they are as a band. How good they sound and how well-rehearsed they are. So, it was a funny thing to take their instruments away and make them act like they’re another kind of group, but then people ended up really responding well to that. When we got together to do this video they said, “We probably should dance some more.” We loved shooting that part, and people seemed to enjoy watching it, so we just thought why fix it if it ain’t broke? You just don’t see very many rock bands doing choreography in their videos. When we would do that, we would do a take and they would choreograph it the moment before, and then say, “OK, let’s do it.” It all feels very spontaneous and doesn’t feel rehearsed.