Blood Orange – Champagne Coast official video + interview

I am always excited to get new Blood Orange goodies. Directed by Haley Wollens (“Bye Bye Birdie” and “Paris, Texas”), here’s Blood Orange’s Duke Nukem style music video for “Champagne Coast,” off Coastal Grooves.

The video premiered on NYTimes’ website, and it included a short and very interesting interview with Dev Hynes (Blood Orange) and Haley Wollens (director), which you can read below.

How do the video and song’s meaning connect?

D.H.: The song, as with every other piece of music I seem to make, is mostly about longing, creating scenarios in regards to an unrequited lover, plans that will never see fruition. So you’re left alone in your digitally created interior to dance by yourself.

And where did this idea of girls dancing in bedrooms, all crudely animated, come from?

D.H.: From the word “bedroom,” which I say roughly 738 times in the song.
H.W.: A girl alone in her bedroom is a recurring moment that has often inspired me, for example in films like “Paris, Texas” and “Bye Bye Birdie.” I wanted to represent this in a new way, but the thought of scouting and styling seven different real-life bedrooms at the time was too big a feat for our modest project. It was then that I came to a conclusion that feels quite common among my generation in 2012: “Let’s Photoshop them in.” With producer Maya Barrera, I spent hours at the library sifting through and scanning our favorite rooms from interior design magazines. I collaged the various backdrops together, combining the images from old magazines with photos I found of real teenager’s bedroom walls.

With the help of Berlin-based animator Andreas “Nout” Schmidt, Jude Miller-Chapin and I were able to create a perfectly rendered 3-D world for our subjects to exist in — inspired by Second Life YouTubes and video games, like Duke Nukem.

The décor in each girl’s bedroom seems very specific.

D.H.: All of it was created from scratch. I sent Haley a list of artists work I wanted to be represented in the video: Ed Ruscha, Morris Louis, Sonia Delaunay, Helen Frankenthaler, to name too many.

How did you two begin working together?

D.H.: Through the wonders of the Internet.
H.W.: This would not have happened in any other era. I met Dev, after friending him on Facebook because I loved his music. We instantly hit it if off and became good online friends, liking one another’s posts and writing on each other’s walls.