WWMW2S4M

Whole World Moves Way Too Slow For Me is the last song I wrote for X, and it neatly sums up my views on the creative process. I like to work fast, which sometimes means waiting for collaborators to catch-up; I also value brevity and concision, hence an album of one minute songs or a series of uber-simple cooking videos. The  accompanying film clip required  a sense of speed and urgency – running and singing the song in a single take seemed a perfect way to convey this. Lou, Matt Borneman and I shot some test footage last year, and discovered our excellent location next to Lake Burley Griffin – a stretch of track just wide enough to use a car as a dolly.

Visually, I thought it could be compelling to dress as the iconic Jean-Paul Belmondo in the final scenes of Pierrot Le Fou (it also nods to the band’s Francophile proclivities). I could claim other subtextual conversations are at play (like how Belmondo blows himself up at the end of the film and I collapse at the end of the song), but, really, I just wanted to dress up as Ferdinand! With my hair out and my skin tinted blue, I excitedly found I also resembled Rogan Josh.

Next, I needed to fill the clip with colourful characters – along with the band, I secured the talents of warrior-poets Nathan Gubler , Nick McCorriston and Cameron Thomas.

The opening titles are another homage to Pierrot Le Fou – I was even able to find a ‘Godard’ font, created to celebrate his 80^th birthday.

There’s evident irony in a song about life being too slow… accompanied by a video festooned with references to health and mortality. A personal trainer and his client, a pair of surgeons, and even Death himself all make cameos. I’ll leave interpretations to others, though I will point out I love the cosmic justice whereby I literally avoid and outrun Death (who gets pummeled by Mel and Cath!) only to collapse a few steps later.

My collapse happens as two surgeons begin running alongside me. Even funnier is that they don’t actually assist – Darren and Kev came up with their own slapstick routine, which is so good I want to make another clip just based around their antics.

The take we use is the fourth – we could have kept shooting and added more elements (or refined existing ones) but this take felt like the right amount of energy and spontaneity. Besides, more takes wouldn’t have been in the spirit of the song!  A big shout-out to the unseen heroes of the shoot – Louise McGrath and Kate Hodges, manning the camera and the car respectively.