Isaiah Seret on Pleading for a Miracle in New alt-j Promo

alt-j: Pleader

How did the idea for the story come about and what inspired the promo? 

Alt-J's song was actually inspired by Richard Llewellyn’s seminal 1939 novel How Green Was My Valley — a biblical Welsh Mining epic — and the photos Bruce Davidson shot of Welsh miners in the 1960’s (such as below). There was a strong narrative pulse from the beginning, with Joe Newman (Alt-J musician) adding a further desire for the video to be a supernatural love story that would include a tidal wave of earth.  

So, as a director I was starting with a lot of influence. However, before I started researching Joe’s references, I just tried to listen to the music and see what story it called to mind. I like to imagine the lyrics as if they were dialogue and think about who would say them.  

While listening, a flurry of narratives and visuals emerged, including elements from a screenplay I am writing, inspiration from The Sacrifice by Andrei Tarkovsky, and definitely Window Water Birth by filmmaker Stan Brakhage (whose estate honoured us by granting permission to use birth footage from his groundbreaking film).

Why was Wales the right place to shoot? 

Since it originated as a Welsh story, filming there was only apt, however we were especially fortunate to find in-tact miners cottages, a 17th century chapel, and a spectacular mountaintop home. These interiors were preserved through historical societies and museums, and by filming lightly in these places, we could achieve a nice production value at a music video budget.

Obviously the promo is rooted in the past. How did you decide to visually represent this? 

Period films are interesting to me when they have something to say about the present, so I guess I always want to tell a modern period film. However, in terms of representation, a lot of the visuals as they pertain to the story were honed in in collaboration with our production designer, Marie Lanna. With each discovery, each location, each prop, and each scout, we shaped the story. And in terms of specifics, we actually are quite period accurate and we had lots of experts through the museums and so forth to help advise on these matters.

What qualities were you looking for in the little boy and what was it like working with him? 

Oh man, casting children is so hard. We cast the older little boy first, Ewan Hipperson. He came into the audition held by our casting director, Kahrmel Cochran and sang the song for us and he actually has the most beautiful voice and most beautiful face, so I knew it had to be him. Unfortunately, he had dental braces — and they couldn’t be removed — but he was so good that our digital partners, Time Based Arts, agreed to remove them in post.

And as an aside, I asked Ewan if he had ever cried in a film before. And with a simple innocence he said, "no." And then he waited a long while, looked up at me and said, "but I have in the theatre."

What direction did you give the actors to ensure their character relationships were clear?

With all my videos, I try to create an entire world, back stories, and details. So they live as rich as a feature, and then I distill some key scenes for the film. In this case I worked with the actor couple - Sophie Cookson (Brownwyn) and Morgan Watkins (Andre) - ahead of time. The story was as follows: they were married, he infertile, the couple longing for a child, and the communal belief that a child could save the valley. Hew was Andre’s brother, and the duties to sire the child fell on him, and while this crushed Andre, he ultimately embraced his role as father. But even with this time to introduce the backstory and build the characters with them, we shot so fast, that I didn’t even realize some of the subtleties they were bringing to the performance until the edit. I remember during the filming of the scene where Sophie is holding Morgan in bed, Morgan, with a bit of surprise, looked at me and said, my character is really emasculated. 

What were the biggest challenges in bringing this spot to life and how did you overcome them? 

I have written music videos that have been as ambitious as this one but they've never been made until now. Either it was too much for the musician, or we couldn’t make the money work. There is of course never enough money. But in this case, we had a band who was all in, a production company (Biscuit UK) who was all in, and miraculously, a VFX company (Time Based Arts) committed too. Money wasn’t really the biggest issue, time was. We had three days of filming, which is a lot for a music video but not a lot considering what we had to pull off.  

I remember having a panic attack during lunch on the first day, as we were already behind schedule, so I sat with my cinematographer and we agreed we had to make a few concessions in terms of our shots, and how we shot them. But not too many. And then, the light cooperated, the actors were fast, and we got every scene except for one. 

Time Based Arts: James Allen, TBA founder & VFX supervisor

What issues did you encounter in bringing the storm to life on a low budget and how did you overcome these?

The ambition for the moment of destruction in the film was huge but it was pivotal to the story. It was the kind of treatment you read and the heart speaks louder than the head! We’ve wanted to work with Isaiah for a while and we knew with his vision for this film we had to do it despite the cost. We researched some great shot material of pyroclastic flows captured in Indonesia. The material was incredible and we decided it best that we integrate these clouds into digital matte paintings. We then began looking at ways to integrate this material into the Welsh valleys locations.

Sheldon Gardner shot multiple images on location with the footage in mind and set about giving Isaiah possible shot options that he could use to tell the story. Once the edit began to take shape we were able to settle on hero shots and set about working up these images. In conjunction with the matte painting we worked on the look of the destructive wave that emerges under the cloud. Isaiah wanted it to creatively combine both a landslide and the feeling of a destructive wave similar to the Japanese tsunami. A force that could destroy everything in it’s path. This was a full cgi solution, we simulated the ground breakup and movement of the earth as well as the destruction/ falling down of the houses. It was a great project, we really believed in the vision for the film and were happy to commit the resources to do it justice.