The Artist Explains: Sam Allen - 'Pareidolia'
Sam Allen talks us through his music video for epic, ambient instrumental piece, ‘Pareidolia’, taken from his 2020 EP, ‘Apophenia’.
How did you come up with the concept for the video for ‘Pareidolia’?
Pareidolia is a medical term which defines the human ability to recognise faces in inanimate objects, such as seeing faces in moon craters etc. It’s a really interesting psychological feature of the human mind. So I used a selection of young and old faces interspersed with statue busts to kind of convey that we recognise ourselves in the patterns of nature as much as we do in the mirror.
Do you have any behind the scenes stories you can share with us?
I don’t however have any behind the scenes footage since much of this was bought stock footage.
I’ve found it really interesting to try and “repurpose” stock footage to tell a new story with the music. As a film composer a lot of my craft comes from setting up an emotion to picture, so I thought by working backwards so to speak, ie starting with the music and making the picture fit the music, could be an interesting challenge.
Furthermore the videos I produced for the whole EP are the first ones I’ve made professionally.
Is there a message the video is trying to convey?
I suppose the narrative of the video is that we recognise patterns in everything and that’s a really interesting thing.
Interview by Karla Harris