Is there anything more joyful than explosions filmed on high speed cameras? Today’s new directors are Derek Blais and Miles Jay – their Autoerotique music video Turn Up The Volume is a veritable orgasm of technicolour ejaculate, with a side helping of cake bukake. We caught up with the boys to find out more.
What was your thinking behind this video?
We wanted to visually represent the sensation you get from listening to electronic music. Electronic music is all about having fun with your friends. The cakes exploding is a way to represent the experience of your favourite track being dropped by a DJ. We didn’t want to make something that took itself too seriously, lets blow shit up and have fun!
Love the opening scene in the stark, monochrome kitchen – it contrasts well with the insane, colourful chaos that follows it. Which are your favourite scenes or characters and why?
There is a nice contrast with the Autoerotique duo being the evil chefs cooking up these fantastic cakes and the people responding to the explosions. It mirrors the experience of a DJ serving their music to a crowd. We both love the students graduating and getting blasted in the audience – but we didn’t love the dry cleaning bill. Visually – the tri-colour explosion is the most stunning against the black background. The force was so great, it blew the nozzle off the gun. Our favourite scene is when the cake is raining down – something that happened naturally and a great surprise.
What was the biggest challenge on set?
It was a technically challenging shoot – we had never worked with a phantom cam before – or blown up cakes! We had time to time the phantom cam (which only records for 6 seconds at a time) with the compressed air cannon launching cake matter. We only had one shot at each explosion as it ruined the entire set. There was zero room for error – but we pulled it off. Miles was subjected to some pre-production cake blasting tests to ensure we had the timing down and the right amount of cake matter we needed – it was a pretty rough day outside in the -10 degree Canadian winter. With our graduation cake explosion we only had enough light, shooting at 500 fps, to put the three students directly under a 20×20 silk bounce. We were forced to dolly in and tuck our heads under the bounce and pan up after our heads cleared the frame in the middle of the take!
Where/when did you two meet? How long have you been working together? Why do you work well together?
We met through mutual friends – Miles went to the same university as my sister. We’ve been working together for 6 months now – it’s been great. We work well together because we have complimentary skill sets – off and on set. Miles comes from a film background – and Derek from an advertising background – so we play off each other quite well. Miles might be focusing on something very macro on set – where Derek might be finessing a tiny detail. Then the roles switch quite naturally.
How
would you characterise your work?
Simple, ironic, with some subtext but not too complicated. It’s always good to have things people can relate to. Once you have them engaged, you can take them to weird places. In the case of the Autoerotique video – we start with a birthday party – something everyone has experienced. Once the audience is comfortable with the situation – we throw them for a loop with something unexpected. We always maintain a narrative in all of our work – telling a story is the most important aspect of our videos – even a simple one. With every decision we ask ourselves, “how can we make this more badass!?”
Aside from filmmaking, what inspires you?
Music is a pretty big influence to both of us – we both play instruments – and Derek produces electronic music and DJ’s as well. We are always blasting music in our office. Without music we would probably go mental. Music videos combine our love for the moving image, storytelling and music – the ultimate combination.
