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12th November 2014
Out of control
Title of film: Wild Beasts, Palace
Director: Alex Turvey
Production Company: White Lodge
Alex Turvey takes the performance video into the world of immersive theatre for Wild Beasts

Bizarrely wonderful, please tell all – what was the original brief and how did the idea come about?

I have been in talks with the band for nearly a year about the prospect of collaborating, but schedules seemed to keep us apart. Palace came to me in summer, this is the last release from Present Tense and in my opinion the finest track on an excellent record. There was no brief apart from the band wanted to be featured in the video.

I’m not a fan of traditional performance videos so I developed a concept that put the band in an immersive experience, rather than pushing them through the formalities of a regular shoot, I wanted each member of the band to experience a unique moment outside of their control and to document their experience.

Symbolic and significant players – who are the characters and what do they reflect?

Part of the concept was to build on the thereof ‘Present Tense’, a record that is inspired by the overabundance of information, imagery, media that floods our fragile minds on a daily basis. I asked each band member to contact me directly with a selection of images, sounds / media that had affected them personally that day. The band members were under strict instruction not to confer. What we see unfolding in the video is my interpretation of the bizarre platter of imagery I was served by the band.

Was the production straight forward – any major challenges?

The shoot did present us with many hurdles, the biggest challenge was to lock down the sequencing of the reveals, along side which we had to keep the slime man moist as he was constantly drying out and cracking, keep the artists in a confined room away from the set or any extras, and rely entirely on the single take each member of the band delivered. It was pretty unnerving process but equally thrilling and bizarre.