The dreamy debut single "Unbound" from California girl-boy duo Cathedrals takes the form of a conversation between lovers. For music video director Sam Pressman and videographer Isaac Bauman, the challenge was translating that emotional intensity into a visceral experience.Keeping the song’s story and tone in mind, Pressman's team created a surreal “unbound” world inside a warehouse lit by artist Alex Light's giant, pulsating LED installation, Sugar Cubes. Pressman and company then brought real couples onto the set, and instructed them to interact with one another in front of the cuboid monument.
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Because the video lacks a strict narrative format, ballet dancer Maria Kochetkova’s haunting movements, interspersed in between the shots of the lovers, act as the glue that binds the piece together. Earlier this year, Kochetkova, San Francisco Ballet’s principal dancer, also starred in Francesca da Rimini, a choreographed ballet between two humans and a camera-operating robot."Unbound" finds wholeness in the spaces in between, each visual layer contributing to a bigger picture, explains Pressman. “The intimacy of the lovers is the ground, the base emotion of the song. The light cubes are the rhythm… Maria is the spirit, up and down, dancing our worlds together.”Below, check out some exclusive behind-the-scenes images of "Unbound" in production. Photos by Alex Ember:
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