Music videos are inspired by lots of different things, but it’s rare to find one that was inspired by 5^th grade science fair projects. However, in "Live Your Life (TWINSMATIC Remix)" by Yuna, that’s exactly where directors fourclops turned when coming up with the effects for the video. We talked to Eli Stonberg of fourclops about the process behind the video, which included a slew of practical effects that would pretty much guarantee a win in any science fair in America. 

Doug: What was the original inspiration of the video?

Eli: Yuna moved to LA a few years ago and we were introduced by a mutual friend. We quickly became friends and had been talking about doing a video together for a long time. She was already a big star in Malaysia and was preparing for her US debut. What was nice about this video was that, with Yuna and I being friends, we got to hang out and talk about it before an idea even happened. She wanted something really sparkly and atmospheric with bright flowy colors. I took that and decided, “Hey, I’ve been thinking about these science experiments a lot. What if we make all these colors and beautiful lights out of science projects?” She liked that idea and I went crazy on Google, typing in “science fair projects,” looking up all these different things. There are all sorts of cool visual things you can do with science, I wanted to capture them in ways that you wouldn’t necessarily know what you were looking at. I think that it was important for it to stand alone as a visual piece.

Doug: Can you explain how some of those projects worked? I’m assuming you’re talking about a lot of the effects in the videos that these science fair projects were used for?

Eli: The real jumping-off point happened a long time ago when I found this science fair project where you combine milk, food coloring, and soap. You take a plate, fill it with a thin layer of milk, then drop food coloring onto a spot, 20 drops or so of different colors. You then add one drop of soap into the milk and it creates this crazy reaction between the soap and the milk, causing it to expand. The food coloring doesn’t actually contribute to the reaction, but it allows you to see it all visualized. This reaction can be seen in the first five or six shots of the video. I’ve been interested in that experiment for a long time and it matched what Yuna was going for. Once we decided to work with science projects I started looking into what else was out there, which was really fun. There are all sorts of websites that are for middle-schoolers, teaching you how to do different projects. I did some research and went over to Yuna’s apartment, where we sat together watching different science videos on Youtube, discussing which ones could fit in the video. There are definitely a few that we crossed off the list but would have been fun to do. There was one where you put cornstarch on top of a speaker playing music. It rumbles and makes the fluid dance. I’ll send this to you. I was really into that one but Yuna was like, “It’s cool but I don’t think it’s right for our video, Eli.” Ha! We eventually narrowed it down to eight to ten different things.

Doug: Can you break those down for me in terms of how you were able to make them work into the video?

Eli: All of the science experiments were filmed against black backgrounds. Putting them into the video was very simple with the composite mode “screen” in Final Cut - which is basically like keying out a green screen but removes the black from the image. Once you get rid of the black all you have is the light itself. In one experiment we burned steel wool and shot it with a macro lens. That created the moire of lights that you see in the video. It’s a simple but cool effect because steel wool has so many different wisps of metal, so when burned it creates a chain reaction. We had really nice lenses and got close up, so it created a pretty neat looking sparkly effect. We also did a tornado in a bottle, which is only used once in the video. Instead of her face appearing solid, she appears to be swirling around. That’s a simple one. You just connect two two-liter bottles with a little tube that you can buy at a science store, and you shake the water to create a tornado.

Doug: That’s a throwback one, right there.

Eli: That’s right. We also did a DIY lava lamp, seen in the video as a blue wall of liquid. It’s made simply out of water, vinegar, and dyes. You then drop an antacid tablet into it, which causes the reaction. One of the other experiments that didn’t make the cut is called a Ruben’s Tube, which is an impressive science project. To make it you take a metal tube or PVC pipe, screw in lots of little holes on the top about an inch apart, then you connect the tube to a tank of gas that you’d use at a barbecue. At one end you have the gas coming into the tube, and at the other end you put a latex glove over it, essentially creating a drum on that end. You then hook up a speaker next to the latex glove, so the glove resonates with the sound. Next, you light the whole thing and fire shoots out of the little holes, and it looks like an iTunes visualizer. The music becomes visualized by flames. It was crazy to shoot, because it filled up my entire house with gas and people had to leave the room. My producer was trying to shut me down and I was like, “One more shot!” The DP couldn’t stay in the house because the gas was making everyone light headed. We all could have died and in the end we didn’t even use the footage from the Ruben’s Tube.

Doug: Was there something behind wanting to do everything in a science fair-like, practical style? Do you think it brought something extra to the video?

Eli: Part of it, for me, was just out of necessity. I’m not an effects guy and don’t have too much VFX wizardry up my sleeve. It was a way for me to create cool looking effects practically, and not rely on someone to help me with After Effects. I’m definitely interested in finding practical ways of shooting things when there is an opportunity. The final product is really all that matters, but it is a little bit cooler in a Gondry sort of way if you can figure out how to actually shoot it and pull it off. I got really amped up on the milk, food coloring, and soap project that it led me to think about what else we could do in a similar vein. The internet is filled with all of these how-to videos for science stuff. These videos are great, and they show you exactly how to make those things, but I think that there’s a lack of artistic interpretations of science experiments on the web. That was really what I was going for, I wanted to show how beautiful and fashionable science can be.

Doug: When trying to achieve shooting these things in an artistic way, and getting them to display artistically, what was that process like? Was it all there at the moment with working with the DP to get the shots right?

Eli: Yes, the macro lens does most of the work for you, as does the black background. The challenge was figuring out how to shoot it cleanly without seeing any of the behind-the-scenes stuff at work. For instance, when you make your own lava lamp, you don’t want to see the shape of the object that it’s in, or the glare of the glass, because that gives it all away. We had to figure out a way to shoot this stuff without making it clear what was actually going on. That’s actually the reason why the Ruben’s tube ultimately failed. It’s really something that looks best when you see the whole thing, but that didn’t work out with the concept. I didn’t want to see the tube itself, only the flames that it created. The steel wool, for instance, worked out because when you look at it in these science videos it looks just like steel wool catching on fire. In the video it’s transformed into this magical bouquet of lights. I like that the experiments are taken out of context.

Doug: Did you have a lot of help executing everything? Production assistants and stuff?

Eli: It was a pretty small budget that was stretched thin. I definitely had great help on the shoot itself. My DP, Kevin Phillips, is incredible, not just as a cinematographer but also as a director. This video has been praised for its cinematography, and Kevin’s the reason. His lighting is incredible. Jack Richardson at The Masses pulled a lot of favors and got me a great crew for the shoot. Another person who was crucial to the project was Elliott Sellers, who colored the video for me. You would be blown away if you saw the raw footage, because the final product looks so polished and clean compared to what it was originally. He’s a maestro when it comes to coloring. The team effort on this one was rad.

"Life Your Life" comes off of Yuna's 2012 alubm Yuna.

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.