Dezeen Magazine

Tiny crab faces giant obstacles in Anton Tammi's glitching music video for Bruce Smear

Music: Finnish director Anton Tammi warped imagery of a crab battling metallic fluids and a huge scorpion to create this music video for Bruce Smear's track Pick & Roll.

Bruce Smear Pick n roll

Tammi's video features a variety of post-production effects that create a glitchy flow, which matches Brooklyn musician Smear's erratic electronic sound.

Bruce Smear Pick n roll

The video follows a crab's journey through a distorted world, where it encounters challenges such as silvery liquids, metal forks and a giant scorpion.

Bruce Smear Pick n roll

"We wanted to tell an abstract story of humanity, but without showing a human," Tammi told Dezeen. "The idea was to show a world that could be seen as a meeting place between Darwinism and Surrealism, human versus alien."

"Our protagonist, the crab, found itself caught in the battle of its life," he added, stressing that no animals were harmed during the making of the film.

Bruce Smear Pick n roll

Foundations for the video were first put into place in July last year, when Tammi and Smear began chatting in New York.

Bruce Smear Pick n roll

All the post-production was completed in Tammi's home city of Helsinki, from the winter of 2014 through to spring this year. A lot of what made the final edit was added in spontaneously.

"Throughout the editing process, I found myself adding new obscure layers to the video stuff that I originally didn't plan," said Tammi. "I did all the post work after long days of work, being half asleep really puts you in the right state of mind when working on something like this."

Bruce Smear Pick n roll

The video includes fast cuts and distinct edits, which Tammi used to create a mix of speeds throughout the clip.

"I manipulate a lot of cuts and effects in ways that are unorthodox," Tammi said. "In this video I tend to stretch and bend the images with effects that you wouldn't typically use in a music video."

Bruce Smear Pick n roll

Tammi directed and edited the video alone, but shot the film in one day at a private Brooklyn studio with photographer Tuukka Koski.

Bruce Smear Pick n roll

The camera was controlled by Koski while Tammi set up the scene, positioning the unpredictable animals alongside the other props.

Bruce Smear Pick n roll

"Koski is a brilliant photographer with lots of experience in still life photography, which was ideal, as I could handle the scene," said Tammi. "The unexpected movements in the crabs and the scorpion created a nice tension to the set."

"With actors like that, you never know what they're going to give to you."

Bruce Smear Pick n roll

The video draws inspiration from the cover art for The Prodigy's Fat of the Land album – an edited image of a crab on a beach – in addition to other 1990s music iconography. Tammi also advised that viewers should interpret the liquid metal as the shape-shifting T-1000 villain from the Terminator films.

Bruce Smear's track Pick & Roll was released last year by Driftless Recordings, as part of a four-track EP titled Chlorine.