American Cinematographer - June 2011 - 12

Short Takes
Cinematographer David Myrick combines romantic ambience with a futuristic concept in the video for TV on the Radio’s single “Will Do,” shot with the Canon EOS 5D Mark II.

TV on the Radio’s Vision of a Romantic Future By Iain Stasukevich

“It might be impractical to seek out a new romance,” sings TV on the Radio vocalist Tunde Adebimpe in “Will Do,” a cut on the band’s latest album, Nine Types of Light . “No choice of words will take me back to you.” In the song’s video, directed by Dugan O’Neal and photographed by David Myrick, Tunde plays a man living out his nostalgic fantasy by donning futuristic goggles capable of conjuring a dreamlike virtual reality where he and his lost love are reunited. Myrick vividly recalls his first day working on the video in Brooklyn: “We’d just finished, it was raining, and everybody had already left. Dugan and I didn’t have a car, and we were in some part of Brooklyn we didn’t even know, so we just started walking. I said, ‘We just did something next-level.’” Myrick and O’Neal had been working toward that moment for a long time. Growing up in Monterey Bay, the two met as teenagers when Myrick, whose family owned a camera shop in town, started working as a photo assistant for O’Neal’s father. The future filmmakers hit it off, and in the following years they worked together on a number of features, shorts and music videos. “It’s only been in the last few years that we’ve started to figure out who we are as artists,” says Myrick, referring to his partnership with O’Neal and visual-effects artist Brandon Hirzel, a.k.a. Bemo. As a trio, they’ve made videos for Eskmo, The Glitch Mob and now TV on the Radio. Even though they’re still early in their careers
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— they’re all under 30 — a clear and unique style is emerging. Myrick attempts to sum it up: “Dugan’s style is pretty psychedelic, and I definitely have a psychedelic thing going on color-wise, but I can also have a very natural style.” Myrick and O’Neal didn’t have a lot of resources on hand to produce “Will Do,” but they pushed themselves to compensate with strong visual and narrative ideas. The virtual-reality idea was one that O’Neal had been sitting on for some time. “I just love the idea of a gadget that you can plug your dreams into and create this surreal reality,” the director remarks. “The surreal virtual worlds would be really vibrant and psychedelic, but the real world would be really cold and naturalistic.” Myrick knew he’d be shooting with the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, and he used the opportunity to take advantage of the image qualities specific to the camera, in particular the shallow depth-of-field, while shooting with still-photo lenses that covered the camera’s fullsized 24x36mm sensor. The resulting look lends an impressionistic quality to the video’s reality-based scenes, which were shot on location in Manhattan’s Chelsea and L.A.’s Silver Lake neighborhoods. According to Myrick, the Canon EF 50mm f/1.0L USM lens really set the look. Canon describes the discontinued glass as “the world’s fastest interchangeable SLR lens.” At the time of its release, in 1989, photographers were attracted to the extra stop of light it offered, but its overall image softness, high production cost and low sales figures caused Canon to halt production, resulting in a very short run of actual units. O’Neal’s father was on a waiting list for two years before he could buy one, and he lent it to his son and Myrick to use for their

American Cinematographer

Photos and frame grabs courtesy of David Myrick.

American Cinematographer - June 2011

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