013 // somebody else w/ director Tim Mattia

a very special end to our iliwys music video era. i talk with director Tim Mattia about his experience working with the band to create six of their music videos including "Somebody Else".

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:13

Hello, and welcome to a very special episode of Television of Your Mouth, a 1975 podcast. I'm your host, Britt. The music video for somebody else, my favorite song by the 1975, by the way, and no, I will not be taking questions at this time, is up next in our I Like It When You Sleep music video timeline. And for such a momentous occasion, I thought, why not have the director of the music video Tim Nadia join the podcast? Just kidding, I wish I could have find things. I want to mention the other members of Isvilla to help find these things to be a full system, but I could find an IMDB. I'm sorry, sorry if I missed anyone. And I'm sorry if I mispronounced a name I'm fine with asked on this producers, Tom Barmann, Brandon on Figlia link up my desktop, and Leanne Stock. Cinematographers Adrick Watson, Daniel Stafford Clark, editor Jen Kennedy, production designers Guy Thompson, and colorist Ricky Gosa. Okay. Without further ado, enjoy my conversation with Tim. This is so kind and and cool of you to do this. By the way, it's a very good thing.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Oh, you're welcome. I mean, it somebody sent it to me and I was like, oh, that's interesting. That's cool. Why did you start?

SPEAKER_03 3:19

I guess you were just a fan of the band, or yeah, I'm a fan of the band for sure. And as you know, their visual identity is so much a part of them. Yeah. And also outside of them, I just love movies and music videos are like movies for songs, really, to me. They're like short films. So it just felt like the perfect marriage of two things that I really like.

SPEAKER_00 3:49

Awesome.

SPEAKER_03 3:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Well that's great. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting hearing like other takes on things. Like I listened to your change of heart one, and I was like, oh, that's okay, that's interesting. Things to happen. So like for change of heart, it was originally uh Matty was gonna be um like danced on Soho in London with the cloud over his head going through the streets and it was gonna be raining. And then it would just sort of turn out that like we we looked into it and it was like there was just no way we can do that. Like financially, budgetarily, it was you know, it was impossible. So it's so funny because the the that last shot of like change of heart, for example, that cloud shot took about I don't know, an hour and a half to like just to get the I mean to for them to do it to get the cloud set up, it took them about four hours, but like we were filming other stuff, and it was like, oh, so that was we were gonna take that around London and have him like dancing around London. The reason that was in a fairground was because we would we're like, well, we can't do it in Soho, like what could we do? Where could we do it? And we Yeah, came up with a fairground. And and basically, yeah, that's sort of like how that happened. And then the the choreographer was was the girl, Katie.

SPEAKER_03 5:14

Oh, really? It was her.

SPEAKER_00 5:16

It's yeah, yeah. So she was originally the choreographer, and then we were gonna get someone, but like we were like, hang on, you're amazing. Why don't you do it?

SPEAKER_03 5:23

Yeah. Oh my god, I'm so glad it worked out that way because she was she's great in the video.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Everything that happens in videos is is like uh an amalgamation of of so many different things falling into place or not falling into place. So we were gonna film in another fairground entirely, like in a it was in the West End of London.

SPEAKER_02 5:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

And it was just like I I went and looked at it with with the producer, and we were like, oh, it's not, I don't know, it just didn't feel right. Just didn't have this vibe, and and just out of sheer coincidence, someone had seen that they were packing up that fairground. And so we were like, wait, wait, wait, don't pack it up.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

We're gonna come.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Yeah, yeah. So we went and had a look and we were like, yeah, we can shoot it, but we gotta shoot it. Like I can't even remember when it was, like very quickly.

SPEAKER_03 6:14

How long do you think that entire shoot took for a change of heart?

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Change of heart. I I well actually physically the shoot was just one night. Yeah, we just shooted.

SPEAKER_03 6:24

You just did that all in one night.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We just did it in one night.

SPEAKER_03 6:28

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

But it was it was good because like by that point, like Matt how many have we done that? So me and Matty had done four things, maybe? So we were in a rhythm, and so like by the time we got to somebody else, it was like yeah, it was like a really good flowing mm machine kind of thing, you know, it was going really well. It was really such a collaborative processing where there was so much like even Brandon, the producer who's actually in the somebody else video, he's in the background of the of the strip bar, but him and me and Matthew and Sabira just had this shorthand, so everything would just felt so easy. Yeah. You know, because that video, yeah, somebody else it was it wasn't gonna be that kind of thing. Like basically what happened was we Matty had a bunch of like vignettes, a bunch of scenes, and then the video went through a he had a lot of different ideas for how how it wanted to go. At one point, he was talking with Mick Jagger about being in the video, and I remember that was all quite exciting, and then there was another cinematographer who was gonna do it, a guy called Steve Annis, and he sort of dropped out at the last minute. So there's an amazing cinematographer called Andrick Watson who did it in the end, okay, which was amazing. But basically, yeah, so we had booked to fly over from LA to London to shoot this video, and we hadn't really got a script, we've just got a few kind of vignettes that Matt had was talking about. One was like in a working men's club with a spotlight on him. Like we never ended up doing that, but but we went round and round, and my biggest memory, and like let me caveat all of this by saying I have a terrible memory, and this is 10 years ago. But um, but so yeah, this is my recollection, and it might not be a hundred percent, but but yeah, no, so we were we went round to to Matty's house when he was living in East London. It was me, Brandon, and him. I just remember sitting at the kitchen table, and we were like, How can we pull all of these threads together? Like, I can't, you know, these are all cool little ideas, these are nice little moments, but like they don't really have a through line. And basically I can't even remember who it was, because it might have been might even be Brandon, it might be me, but it was someone was like, Oh, it's kind of why we do it like Fight Club. And it was sort of that's where it all came from. It was sort of a re it wasn't really a reference to Fight Club, but it was just it was using that kind of structure, I guess. Because I know Matt, you know, Matty knew that he wanted to make out with himself pa, but it was like, how do we get to that point? So so we ended up shooting the video. I think that was like we we'd already landed in London, so we were we were shooting something. Decided that day in his kitchen that it was gonna kind of be that, and then it was just like a mad race to find all the locations and things and and I think like that. Well, we sh yeah, I mean we shot I think we shot somebody else over two nights. No, two days. And yeah, we shot loads and loads and loads and loads. But then we made some stuff up. I don't know if you remember he's kind of shadow boxing himself against the wall. So we just did that while we were waiting for the taxi to come and pick us up and take us to the next location.

SPEAKER_03 9:48

Love it.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

Um what uh and you know that lightning that happens in somebody else?

SPEAKER_03 9:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

When he's skateboarding the like that was real. Was it? Yeah, that was completely real. We were like, what is going on?

SPEAKER_03 10:03

Yeah. It's perfect. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:06

Because I think we were shooting I think we were shooting someone, something else. I think we were shooting in the working men's club in Peckham. And we hadn't got that other location. It's quite a famous location in London, the exteriors where he was skateboarding. It's been in lots of films, I think. But we hadn't got permission to use it, and then halfway through the shoot, some we just got a call from the location scout. It's like, we can use it between now and you know eight and ten. So like the whole crew packed up and we went over there and did all the skateboard. But yeah, it was it was pretty magical that shoot. I think, like I said, just Matty on screen is pretty hypnotic.

SPEAKER_03 10:49

He has charisma for days. You know what I mean? You just put a camera in front of him and just let him go, I feel like.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that was yeah, and that was he was so comfortable with with me and the crew, and he was just so like it was it's so much easier to work with someone when you're able to just go, hey, can you just do this real quick? And then them not go, oh really? Why? Why do I need to do that? And I'm like, Well, because it will look cool. He would just go, Yeah, sure. You know, so if so, you know, any lots of other artists, if the director comes out of the bathroom and goes, Hey, can you sit here and just sing into this mirror? They'd go, No, I think I'm good. But he was like, Yeah, great, cool. Does it look cool? Great, let's go.

SPEAKER_03 11:38

Yeah, so it makes your job much easier.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_03 11:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Yeah, that video is like the culmination of everything that we that me and Matty had done together. I think for me. It's so rich, it's got so many Easter eggs in it. I don't know. Every other video is referenced in there in in in some point of time. I just re-watched it. Oh, you did? I literally just watched it. I hadn't watched it in ages, and we were like, oh god, I forgot we put we put writing on the walls, we put the you know, the art is on the streets. We've that's in there a couple of times. We put a in the strip bar there's a shot of change of heart and robbers, and then in the beginning there's the rabbits, which is a reference to the David Lynch movie. There's live rabbits painted on the wall, and then the dead rabbit skulls. And then behind him there's a robbers picture on the wall.

SPEAKER_02 12:35

Is there really?

SPEAKER_00 12:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a photo of him and Chelsea on the wall. In the strip club or? There is in the strip club and the room at the beginning.

SPEAKER_03 12:46

Oh wow. I don't think I've ever clocked that.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

Yeah, there's a few of those. So my wife edited it. She did everything from the sound onwards.

SPEAKER_03 12:55

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

Um and yeah, we kind of came back to her with this. I mean, it was so complicated for her to stitch it together. It's all gem. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:07

Well, she did an incredible job because a lot of that video is in the in the edit, right? And how you put it all together.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

100%. And there's shots in there that we were looking at. There's a shot of him leaving the bar, of Matthew leaving the bar, and I remember like the we the camera just happened to be left on by accident. And so that's how we managed to get him. But and then there was because everything we had to shoot three times, basically. Every scene we had to shoot three times. So we didn't even occur to us when we were chatting at his kitchen table that you know it's gonna be three o'clock in the morning in Peckham and we're gonna be tired, and we're like, oh, we have to do this fight three times.

SPEAKER_03 13:50

Yeah, I guess it's kind of perfect, right? Because he is kind of on like the stumbling night out. So to have it be like 3 a.m. and he's like exhausted, it kind of works.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

The thing about him is Matty is amazing, like he's such an incredible person, too. I and I like the the things that we did together, I'm so proud of. Because he's just not afraid of looking sloppy or messy. Do you know what I mean? In that video. It and it and it adds to his the charisma because he's so like the he doesn't just it just didn't have to try. I think lots of people when you kind of point a camera at them, they they sort of change into like, oh, I've got to try really hard. I mean, you just point a camera at Matt and it looks great, you know, to be honest. But during that, it was just so nice because we would just be making things up on the fly, and everyone trusted everyone, so you know it was it was great. Yeah, it was huge. You know, I remember doing the city, and it was very much more that black and white aesthetic, and it kind of it was like the label wanted to continue that kind of vibe. And then when Rob has happened, like Robert's changed everything, I think, but for my career, and I remember Robber's being the first time not the first time, but uh Robert's being a time that uh you know Matty could can really explore this kind of not a character exactly, but just a part of his performance that was quite outlandish and uh yeah and amazing.

SPEAKER_03 15:21

How did your relationship with the band start?

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Uh but through Samara, who was at the record company, I think I'd done a couple of jobs with her. Literally got the city song and um and I went into the office and they were all sitting around and we were all sitting around a meeting table and it was all very sterile and it was fine. And then we shot that video, it was very cheap, and it was kind of supposed to be all of the elements of a city kind of in one place. It was it was good, but it I it wasn't until Robert's that I think that that's when our relationship right properly began.

SPEAKER_03 16:00

Robbers was I mean, it's still like an iconic music video in the f and um you're like a celebrity of directors among the fans, so props to you.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

No, I mean well Roberts is interesting as well because Matty wasn't gonna do it, like he didn't want to do it. It was originally gonna be the the guy from was it sexual. The sex video. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it was it was originally gonna be that guy, and it just went back and forward, and and I don't know why it wasn't happening, and then it was, and then it was gonna be the guy, then it was, and then suddenly someone was like, Oh, Matty might do it. I was like, Okay, that's that great. Can he have got no idea? And he's still like honestly, I my recollection is even like a few days before it wasn't it wasn't guaranteed that he was gonna do it. We weren't sure who was gonna be the guy. And yeah, thank god it was him, because like it was it is incredible, and him and Chelsea just like connected immediately. Their chemistry, you can't make that no we would just go up and you know, as a crew, we'd kind of they'd just be off smoking and chatting and talking about things, and we you know, they just immediately clicked and it was yeah, it was brilliant. I I don't know, it's funny that it's we it's just a bit of magic. It was just a bit of magic because he hadn't really acted before, and and yet you'd look at that and think that it was like an Oscar win. Like it's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 17:31

I love you know, hearing from directors, and a lot of things just become happy accidents, right? Like Maddie wasn't gonna be it, and now and he was in it, and it ended up being incredible, and you know, you kind of like sometimes just have to make things up on the fly that end up being the best things. So going back to somebody else, the rabbits that in the beginning your idea, whose whose idea was that?

SPEAKER_00 18:00

No, no, that was Matt. No, that was Matt Maddie. Okay. He had um so he'd seen, I guess, the David Lynch short film Rock Rock Rabbit, and then he sent it to me, and I was like, Oh yeah, okay, interesting. I hadn't seen it. Uh and then I remember so the I felt really bad because there was a girl who came in for the day, and she sat where where Matty was sitting on the sofa. He waited again, he wasn't ever supposed to be the the other figure on the sofa. So this girl sat there for about three hours while we shot it, and then I just did at the end to like I can't even remember how this happened, but Matt I was just like, Matty put on the dressing gown and go and sit there. And he sat in that position probably for about, I don't know, a minute. And because and so we and we filmed it, so we just cut him out and put him on the other so on the sofa. But this poor girl was there all day and wasn't anywhere in the video. But that room was but you know, that was behind the pub, I think the behind the working men's club that we shot in. So I think that behind that wardrobe at the back of the room was the door to the to the bar.

SPEAKER_03 19:08

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

Yeah. And then by the time when it came to leaving the whole thing in there, you know, the whole four minutes of it or whatever it is, five minutes. Yeah, I think I think the label weren't particularly happy about about it. But I'm glad they did, because I guess I said I watched it again today for the first time in forever, and it is it's pretty cool. It is. Jen Kennedy, who edited it, m gave him all of these weird little movements.

SPEAKER_03 19:39

Yeah, it's almost like choppy, it's not very fluid. And it like puts the viewer kind of like on the back foot from the beginning, because you're like, what is happening? What is going on?

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Well, the idea was that he he it was the idea was that at the end of Change of Heart, he gets left under this cloud, and then he basically goes home. The clown goes home to his flat, which is really horrible. So he goes in and then he gets ready to do the next video. So yeah. Yeah, it was cool, but that video is just so packed. I forgot how many Easter eggs there are in there. I wrote them down. Jen help.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

Oh my god, yes.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

Let me just read it.

SPEAKER_02 20:20

Please go through the list, yes.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

Yeah, these are the ones we we found that we've forgotten about. So when he leaves a strip club, his hand goes up the wall, and it's a copy of the hand movement from Robbers when he goes into the house and he wipes blood up the wall, so we copy that hand. The lyrics on the karaoke screen screen is just says me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me.

unknown 20:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

Uh, which was funny. There's pictures of Robbers in the strip bar and and change of heart behind the bar. Uh there's a box on the bottom of the skateboard. These things, lots of these things we put on afterwards, by the way. Um, what have we got? We've got the dead rabbits, live rabbits. Yeah, the mirrors was a thing. That was like the duality the fight club throughout.

SPEAKER_02 21:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

We just and we got really lucky in terms of like the main like one of the performances in a was in the toilet of the the bathroom of the nightclub. We just stole that when he's kind of leaning against the mirror and singing to himself, and then behind the mirror, there just happened to be these other mirrors that went on for infinity. And the honest truth is, I went in, I went in to use a bathroom, and I was like, wow, that mirror's really cool. And just said to Matt, can you come in here and just can we just film this real quick? And that's how that happened.

SPEAKER_03 21:39

Again, another really cool happy accident.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 21:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

I mean, we shot that strip bar at like nine o'clock in the morning or something. It was crazy.

SPEAKER_03 21:51

Such a depressing place to be at nine o'clock in the morning.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

No, the smell, the smell. Yeah, and then there's another one where we put the art on the Street, we wrote that afterwards. He walks down this alleyway and it's on in the graffiti there.

SPEAKER_03 22:06

I've never seen it.

SPEAKER_00 22:07

That's like a blink and you miss it one. But that's like because we put because we put that originally on the board for Robert on the cinema.

SPEAKER_02 22:15

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

So they did that physically. And then they then we put it on afterwards in post on the Burger Band in Change of Heart.

SPEAKER_03 22:23

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

Yeah. So there was a few. There was a few in there.

SPEAKER_03 22:28

I love that. How did you fall into this? Directing music videos.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

Uh I was filming uh bands for this magazine in England called The NME. And they had a website. And I so I used to film some live shows for them. And then um yeah, I did some, you know, bits and pieces in photography around London. And then yeah, and then I moved to America and kind of did a couple of little little jobs. But yeah, Robert's was, I think Robert was my first American proper proper job. And I've been there a little while. And it you know, it wasn't a huge budget, and it wasn't, you know, it wasn't we never thought it was gonna be. Well, I didn't I didn't think it was ever gonna be so you know career changing for me. And but yeah, that was the first kind of one, and it all kind of went from there. I think I got a lot of work from from people who love that Robert's video. I know there's a couple of artists, I won't name them, but they've definitely gone, oh, we want it to work with you because of Robert. So that's always been good.

SPEAKER_03 23:34

Well, you deserve it. The video's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 23:37

Yeah. Somebody else, a change of heart. It's just Maddie. The rest of the guys aren't in the videos. How do you how does your job change, if at all, when you're working with like a group of people, like a full band versus just one person?

SPEAKER_00 23:56

Um, I think with one person, you're just you're just able to concentrate more on them. You know, it's just it's as simple as that. I don't know. That's not very romantic, but you know, for somebody else, if the if the rest of the band were in that strip club scene, for example, I would have had to go and talk to them and place them, and and and as it was, it's just Matty. So we can we can make things up as we go, we can try things, we have time to experiment, you know. So basically, it's just a bit more freedom when it's only one person. Not that there's anything every time we've shot with the whole band, they've been amazing. Like on the sound, for example, they were incredible. See, the sound was another example example, another example of I think that I got a call from Jamie, the manager, saying Matty's got this idea and that we're gonna be in a box and it's gonna fill up with water. And I was like, okay, that sound sounds cool. And I told my producer, and he was like, Absolutely not. He's like, Do you have any idea how much that would cost? And it was prohibitively expensive. But there's things like even in the sound, you know, all of those people were supposed to represent different people that we all like. People of cultural interest, you know, just like Freddie Mercury and Kirk Cobain. And but nobody really got that. But that's fine. It just looks like everyone says, Oh, they look like a bunch of scientists, but every person was supposed to be someone else. I never set up yeah, no, I know, no, but not many people did.

SPEAKER_03 25:35

I'm the I'm going to have to go back and watch.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

That was another one when he does the uh box with signing. That was a reference to the sound video. Help me. You know when he wrote help me in the sound in the sound video? Yeah. Yeah, that was completely he just improvised that. The camera was literally walking past, and he and he just blew on that and wrote that.

SPEAKER_02 25:58

And I was like, I mean, I don't know how you feel like that.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

Yeah, exactly. But another thing with that sound video is that you know the bit where they're watching themselves at the end?

SPEAKER_02 26:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

So that nearly didn't happen. Like we literally almost had to physically fight because they would they'd run out, we'd run out of time in that studio, and they were like, You and we hadn't shot that shot. So the video had no ending. And I remember the they've just said, You've got to stop filming. They were like, Well, we've got no ending. They're like, Well, you've got to stop, it's done, it's finished. We were literally shouting, we've got to get an ending. And um, and we shot that those two shots of them watching themselves is the only thing we shot.

SPEAKER_03 26:41

Really?

SPEAKER_00 26:42

They let they they allowed us like two minutes, and that's what we did.

SPEAKER_03 26:45

Wow. You would never know that at watching it, that it that a rush thing that you guys had to do. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 26:53

Yeah, well again, you know, Jen Kennedy edited like every single frame she made work.

SPEAKER_03 26:59

Incredible. Yeah, Jen, thank you. I don't want to take up too much more of your time, but I need to ask you what is one of your favorite music videos of all time?

SPEAKER_00 27:16

Of all time? Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 27:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 27:20

Uh for some reason that nine-inch nails video is coming into my head.

SPEAKER_03 27:25

Which one? Closer. Oh, that one's great, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:29

I mean, that's pretty amazing, isn't it? What's that director's name?

SPEAKER_03 27:34

Mark Romanek. Roman.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

There you go.

SPEAKER_03 27:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:37

Mark Romanek. I think most things he does were pretty amazing. I I once met him. This is a name drop, so I apologize. But I once met him at Jared Leto's house in Los Angeles.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

Okay. And I was random.

SPEAKER_00 27:50

And I was I was I was so starstruck. Because I was gonna do a 30 seconds to Mars video, but it just never never materialized. But we ended up, I ended up going to Jared Leto's house to talk about it. And Romanek was there and I was like probably starstruck. Because I think he's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 28:08

That's so cool. Yeah, he did, oh right, he did 99 Problems, uh, Jay-Z's video too.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Oh no.

SPEAKER_03 28:16

Oh, one hour photo. I didn't know he directed one hour photo, the movie.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

He didn't know, I think he did an amazing Fiona Apple video. The criminal.

SPEAKER_03 28:25

He did criminal?

SPEAKER_00 28:26

Again, criminal is an amazing video.

SPEAKER_03 28:29

Legendary. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:31

Let's have that in there. Definitely that's in there.

SPEAKER_03 28:34

The choices. Yeah. Did you grow up like watching music videos? I was definitely like the music video generation, getting ready for school, and TVI.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

I did, yeah. My well in England we didn't have like cable, but my friend had it, so I would go around to his house and watch music videos.

unknown 28:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

I got obsessed. But like you said, you know, I got I just I got involved with shooting live bands, and then I loved movies, but my attention span is so short that it's really great to be able to make, you know, like Robbers is almost like a movie, but if it was a movie, it would have taken like months to shoot and I would have got bored, I think. So I love the fact that I love that you can just you know take these little mini things for a couple of days and create something magical.

SPEAKER_03 29:22

I love that. I love it. Thank you so much for talking to me. This has been amazing.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

Oh, you're welcome. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 29:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:29

Thank you so much. Well, anything else you need, give me a shout. And um, yeah, it's been lovely talking to you.

SPEAKER_03 29:35

You too.