Our mission with this music video is to raise awareness of suicidality and to show how communities can uplift individuals in their time of need. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, but we are always stronger together.
The pandemic challenged every phase of this process, but it also reaffirmed why this cause is so important.
It started in a garage.
Body language has the power to express our innermost emotions, and for that reason we chose to create this music video using the physical voice of dance.
This initial section shows John holding death (Terez) in his hands, drawn to her as her touch comforts him. He is struggling, but in this moment death appears to help him ease his pain.
And grew in a park.
Stephen describes suicidal thoughts like a toxic relationship. As we continued to develop the dance we used this theme to build the movement.
This rehearsal dance with John and Terez is meant to represent the conflict we feel when we recognize the one we’re attracted to is actually causing us more pain. There’s still a tenderness to their embrace, but John is discovering that Death has been leading him in the wrong direction.
Each rehearsal was recorded and shared with our director, who helped guide the progression of the dance to align with his vision.
“Working with people you trust leads to the most incredible creations. This film required lots of vulnerability and diligence to address such an important cause, and I could not be more grateful to work with such a supportive team of collaborators.” — Ben Needham-Wood, choreographer
Building a visual treatment.
One of the biggest challenges in any artistic collaboration is ensuring that everyone is working towards the same vision. By creating visual treatments, our director was able to clearly communicate his ideas so that each collaborator’s work would add more depth to the film.
The image displayed is just one page from the Her Cold Hands Visual Treatment.
“Creating a world that welcomes an abstract viewing experience, while supporting such a poignant message, is rewarding because it feels that there is space for all of the collaborators to put themselves into the work. This was one of those dreamy projects where the elements just seemed to smoothly come into tighter focus the more we dug in.”
— Susan Roemer, designer
Designing the Characters
Much like the visual treatment used for production, our designer built visual slides to develop the look of our performers in each scene. This process allowed our designer, choreographer, and director to collectively craft each look to fit the progression of the film.
The image displayed is just one slide from the Her Cold Hands Design Deck.
After months of planning, practice, and patience, we were ready for production.
The rise and fall of COVID cases across the United States forced us to delay filming multiple times. Our creative team used each delay as an opportunity to further develop the film, and when we were finally cleared for production we were eager to make some meaningful art.
Her Cold Hands was captured in one weekend of filming, working with minimal crew and added safety measures to ensure the health of all those involved.
3 days, 3 locations.
Day 1 of filming focused on the apartment scenes where John struggles with suicidal ideation.
Day 2 brought our crew to a property north of San Francisco where we were able to create three distinctly different scenes - the woods, hillside, and streetlight. Each site reflects a different memory or thought in John’s mind as he struggles to make sense of what he’s feeling.
Day 3 took us back to San Francisco to capture the beach scenes. We were grateful to have the support of the park rangers for this final location, allowing us to safely wrap our filming with the security of a protected set.
That’s a wrap!
With all locations complete, our director worked with the footage to build a first cut of the music video. This was shared with our creative team, refined, and then mastered to become the finished film.
