The Artist Explains: Dustin Tebbutt - 'Satellite'

Dustin Tebbutt speaks to us about his striking yet delicately choreographed visuals for equally delicately crafted indie-folk single, ‘Satellite’, out now via Eleven: A Music Company.
Combining fragile folk sensibilities with flutters of subtle, electronica, ’Satellite’ is an intimate, brooding and emotive offering taken from Dustin Tebbutt’s forthcoming EP ‘Chasing Gold’ due for release on October 26th.

Dustin Tebbutt Explains:
Where was the video for 'Satellite' filmed? 
For this clip we hired a giant warehouse in an industrial area of Melbourne. It took a while to find, but we wanted a large space to create a stage that felt like it was in the middle of a 'nothingness'. To achieve this we had to shoot at night, black out all the windows, and cover up parts of the walls with black cloth to keep all the background light out of the cameras and get clean shots. We also needed a really high celling as the 'floating in the air' parts were all done in the room on the day.

How does the video connect with the song?
The song and the clip are quite linked in a symbolic way, the setting of this stage placed in the middle of blank space, and the play on gravity link pretty strongly with the themes in the song. However, we wanted to make a clip that had a visual journey more than a narrative woven through it, so that keeps any literal links between the lyrics and the clip off limits. In this way I kinda feel like it creates a visual backdrop for the story of the song to play out in.. more than trying to visually tell you what to feel. 

Any noteworthy behind the scenes stories? 
This shoot was pretty full on, we had one day (or I should say night) to get it all done, and the trickiest part was the ambitious task of making 8 people gracefully float in the air. We had a wire crew come in and harness us all up, and a giant steel frisbee looking structure hanging from the roof with pulleys. For those shots there was a forklift attached to the UFO part, and by lowering its forks with a tonne barrel of water strapped to it everyone would be lifted up. It was kind of surreal singing this song and performing to camera while there's all that action around and the people being hoisted into the air trying to stay dead still.

Could you tell us about the ideas/ themes/ imagery used? 
Both the song and the clip look at a sense of distance, and some kind of barrier between people or worlds that you cant quite get across. The idea of a satellite orbiting a body, held in a balance by its gravity and own momentum is used here as a metaphor for feeling trapped half in and half out of a relationship.. not really being able to leave, but at the same time not being allowed to get too close. 

Is there a message the video is trying to convey?
Although there's not a grander message or call to action the song is trying to inspire, I hope people can find some strong reference points in the track and video that perhaps resonate with their own personal experience, and through that bring their own interpretation and meaning to song.

Interview feature by Karla Harris