Dezeen Magazine

A watery accident plays out in slow motion in Albert Sala's music video for John Matthias

Dezeen Music Project: water becomes the main character in this black and white music video created by director Albert Sala for John Matthias's Spreadsheet Blues.

Having never worked with water before, Albert Sala was interested in the different effects he could create to help evoke a sense of melancholy and tenderness he found in Matthias's music.

John Matthias's Spreadsheet Blues directed by Albert Sala

Sala was recruited by Matthias's record label Village Green to develop the proposal for the video.

"As I listened to the first notes of the song, I sank into a nocturnal and rainy atmosphere, and saw raindrops falling on a lake,"  Sala told Dezeen.

John Matthias's Spreadsheet Blues directed by Albert Sala

"Following this train of thought, I started to work with the idea that the main character in this video should be water. I was interested by the possible effects we could achieve with its movement and light changes," he said.

Each object from the fallout of an accident, which takes place off-screen, appears on the surface of the water, some emerging from underneath in slow motion and some falling from above to create a series of hypnotic scenes.

John Matthias's Spreadsheet Blues directed by Albert Sala

To help control this effect, Sala created a series of platforms for each item to stand on within a cube filled with water.

"It is a visual metaphor in which our character has an accident, causing the realisation that the things that surrounded him in life weren’t as important as he once thought," said Sala.

"The visual idea of the project was to evoke a sense of melancholy and tenderness, states our character goes through, with the help of elegant and poetic imagery."