Watching an Alma Har’el music video is a bit like having someone whisper in your ear in riddles and code the secrets of life. With a piercing eye she marries the poecy and narrative power of landscape, character and dance with delicacy, beauty and a sensitive truth.
It’s not surprising that Har’el began in photography, as every shot has powerful imagery and is framed to perfection to create a rich tapestry that expresses not only the music to which it plays to, but the life that led to it’s creation. Textures, emotions and colours ooze out of every frame with a melancholy urgency and grace to tell you a story of human experience and feeling.
Har’el has frequently collaborated with singer Zach Condon on Beirut’s music videos and it’s a partnership that has resulted in some amazing clips. In ‘Elephant Gun’, which was nominated for "Best Directorial Debut" in the MVPA awards, we are treated to a circus-like menagerie of a flailing parade, as joyful and playful as it is heavy-hearted. In an interview with shotsringout.com Har’el describes her intention behind this precarious balance of emotion:
“I tried to bring out the contrast between the endless appetite for the present moment in all it’s beauty and richness, and the inner melancholy of the poet among the celebrating crowd.”
‘Elephant Gun’ also has a foreign feeling to it, and with the walls plastered in maps and the clip beginning with an ornately drawn compass we are given a sense of nomadic dissatisfaction, identity, travel, distance and home. This is a theme that is echoed in another Har’el/Beirut collaboration with their clip for ‘Concubine’.
A journey is expressed through a striking landscape and the character that moves through it, as a young Condon (played by Mike Parrish) navigates adolescence through a baron American countryside, juxtaposed with a grown-up Condon in the city where he seems displaced and forlorn.
Beirut’s ‘Postcards from Italy’ reveals Har’el’s fascination with the romantic, affected and authentic visual qualities of Super 8 film. Constructed from family home movies found on e-bay and footage taken in Har’el’s backyard with Condon and his girlfriend, ‘Postcards from Italy’ is a touching, quirky and personal document that reflects family life and childhood, drenched with fuzzy, hazy vibrant colour. Har’el likens the effect of Super 8 to our memories, flickering and inconsistent with reality, a concept she develops further with Taylor Hawkins (drummer for the Foo Fighters) and the Coattail riders in their clip for ‘Louise’.
For ‘Louise’ Har’el worked with video performer Surya Buchwald to allow Hawkin’s control the edit to some of the background projections through MIDI triggers on his drums while he plays. Some of the set design for was created by Alan E. Muraoka, who was responsible for the art direction on Little Miss Sunshine. Being a fastidious perfectionist, Har’el explains in an interview with videostatic.com how she recreated the Super 8 effect on the new footage:
"When we got to post, I decided that all the digital effects you can use to age film makes it look fake. I bought a black box for home telecine and used my Super 8 projector to make some homemade scratches and burns. Then Jay Majer and I would composite them into the footage. We were going crazy over it for hours, choosing every hair, scratch and burn until it looked good. I knew nobody would notice, but we had to do it."
This clip for Jack Penate’s ‘Tonight’s Today’ was nominated best music video award at the European MVA and for best Cinematography in the prestigious Camerimage festival. Here Har’el’s passion for expression through landscape, character and dance truly shines. She cites Bob Fosse as a major influence in her use of dance as “he’s totally committed to fully exploring the mood and meaning underneath every dance scene”.
As a final treat, enjoy Alma Har’el’s creation for Shearwater’s ‘Hidden Lakes’. Centered around the relationship between man and his best friend, Har’el once again takes us on a visual trip we’ll want to re-visit over and over again.
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