The Director Explains: Frogbelly and Symphony - 'Benjamin Went Fishing'
Director Juha Hansen talks to us about working with Frogbelly And Symphony to create their brilliantly bizarre music video for ‘Benjamin Went Fishing’ which was inspired by the films of Richard Lester and Wes Anderson.
How did you decide on the video treatment/visual for the ‘Benjamin Went Fishing”’music video?
Thomas played me early demos of the forthcoming album. We decided to make a video for the song ‘Benjamin Went Fishing’. We started sending ideas back-and-forth and it was pretty clear that we needed a boat. Thomas found that small yellow raft and bought it. A lot of the ideas for the video were based on that.
Around the same time we were given an opportunity use the old Victoria Baths in Manchester for our video shoot and that really fuelled our imagination! It was the foundation for many of the visual ideas in the video. From that point on we knew we had to use authentic Victorian costumes and those turned out to be a perfect fit for the band’s individual characters.
Based on that we started to write the scenes and with that came the main story of Benjamin disappearing. I had the idea of a two layered story. For the outside scenes we decided to shoot in the Peak District near Sheffield and use Redmires reservoir as one main location, which made for a perfect pond. It was an open water situation surrounded by the lush green colors. Those surroundings were great to let the characters roam and improvise.
How does the video connect with the song?
‘Benjamin Went Fishing’ is synonymical for Ben Trott temporarily leaving the group and then returning and reuniting with it. We wanted to represent that story in the video in a colourful and fairytale-esque way.
So, not only is the song itself a part of the band’s history, it had also become a part of the bands evolution and process over the years. To me it also symbolises ‘our’ long term collaboration which connects me very deeply with the group and its individual members - almost like i am an extra band member.
Do you have any unforeseen behind the scenes/making-of stories you can share?
Thomas who produced the song was also partly in charge of the video production. The shoot had to be organised in advance, prior to a concert tour because we had scheduled it immediately after.
So when we started working on the video Frogbelly And Symphony had just got back from a 23 day run across Europe! Everybody was pretty tired.
We were just on our way to the peak district and .... it started snowing which took us by surprise. We had to postpone the shoot and essentially lost an entire day but after all we still got all the scenes we wanted. I’m also quite happy Ben didn’t drown with that little rubber boat out in the reservoir on a freezing cold February day! The thing wasn’t even completely air-proof and slowly deflated but Ally who was in charge of the props did his very best to keep it afloat. He sealed the valve with a cork from a wine bottle.
Also at Victoria Baths the next day it was absolutely freezing!! The superintendent let some water in the pool so we could float the boat. The guys had to walk through the ice cold water time and again which I think really added to the feel of the video. So basically, I was presented with a freezing group of actors who were super exhausted and just wanted to go home and sleep. But every time I called them from the green room to get back into character, they just nailed it. We had to shoot all the scenes in a short time window so we hired an additional camera guy, Jess James who did a magnificent job.
One of the things I love the most about the video is them singing the last bit of the song a cappella - we recorded that sound on camera and how it wonderfully echoed in the Baths. I was very delighted when that bit of original audio from the shoot got mixed into song and even made it onto the record!
Symbolically, that is what the processes in this group of is about: Echoing and feeding the creative process back-and-forth and back into itself. Over the years we have learned something interesting and good will happen, whatever we do. Our work as a team has benefited a lot from that growing confidence.
Could you tell us more about the ideas/themes used?
One of our main source of inspiration during that time was Richard Lester. Thomas and I watched a few of his films - the Beatles ones of course but what really blew us away was The Bed Sitting Room with Marty Feldman. It is to an extent the main inspiration for the formation of characters in the BWF music video. The humor, the surrealism, the look.
Aesthetically I was initially thinking ‘a little Wes Anderson’ that time. That’s why I decided to shoot most of the scenes in wide angle symmetrical frames. The wide-angle also allows you to come up very close to your main object whilst at the same time you’re showing a lot of background and what’s going on landscape wise and architecturally. I think that’s also what made the multi layered story work. We have a lot of close-up foreground action and beautiful landscapes an architecturally interesting places but there’s also something happening ‘in between’. We were constantly jumping back-and-forth between these layers. Some of what you see in the final product we actually discovered during the editing process. Thomas and I were sitting together in Hamburg and screened the material for hours on end, raking through a ton of stuff, looking for all those little detail shots with that particular ‘in between two realities’ quality.
What do you hope people take away from watching the video?
I hope everybody enjoys watching the music video and falls in love with the song like I did. One of our ideas was to create sort of a chain reaction which really sucks the viewers attention into the ‘World of Benjamin’ right from the start and never lets you get out until the very end.
Maybe some people feel like watching it for a second, third or fourth time and discover all the little details which you might miss when you watch it for the first time.
Interview by Karla Harris