Dancer In The Dark
Jaron Albertin used a heat-detecting camera to light up Emily Haines's "Hell"

Jaron Albertin, director: In the beginning, Emily [Haines] and I went through a couple different ideas for this video. After doing “Doctor Blind,” we became good friends and she put the trust in me to come up with the idea as a whole. Because we had a significantly smaller budget than “Doctor Blind,” we wanted to do something completely different, something a bit more experimental. In Canada, we have a grant system to go through and sometimes it can take months and months from initial idea before a video actually gets made. That was the case for this video, so I had a lot of time to think about what to do.

I watched a movie called La Vie Nouvelle a few months back, and in that movie there is a scene where they used this black-and-white negative image. It is such a dark and emotional moment and it looked so good, it really stuck with me. I had to figure out how they did it. I did some research and found out they used a thermal-based camera. Generally thermal images are in color, but this was in black and white. I was like, damn, that’s it I have to use this technique!

This video is about perception, how we see the world. Imagine living normal, but through this thermal vision it is perceived as Hell. This thermal camera is like putting on a pair of glasses and seeing the world through a different lens, giving it a more complex meaning. I stated thinking of Hell. Hell being hot, based around heat. And then Heaven and Hell are as polarized as black and white. The visual look of the thermal camera was a perfect metaphor for the song.

Now, the concept of the video takes place on a beach. It’s as simple as that. The sun is beating, sending its rays down onto people trying to stay cool. On a beach we have many different characters and types of people. I wanted to expose a darker side of beach life, which reflects acts of life in general. In fact if you were to go to a tourist resort during high season, sit on a beach, indulge, spend, drink. Or go to one of those spring break pilgrimages. To some it would be Hell, and this is the filter through which we see this video.The sun is darkness, and Hell is knocking on our door.

The process of this video was very interesting, because we had to think in heat only. The camera records heat and nothing else, not light. We could have shot the entire video in a pitch-black room, but we didn’t. Everybody who was on board including art department had to think within the realm of hot and cold, and that’s it. It was really fun. How do hot and cold objects react to skin? What does someone look like with ice in their mouth, how do we get veins to pop out through the skin or get streaks on some ones face? Hot and cold was our paint palette.

One technique we used was to spray down each person with a cold mist. This mist would cool down the upper epidermis layer of the skin, allowing the camera to see through it to the lower layer. Giving us a translucent appearance. We also had to pay attention with clothing because some clothes you can see right through!

I want to point out that we did not use an “infra-camera” or “night vision,” nor is it a “negative effect.” It was shot on a thermal camera. The FLIR P640 to be exact, and I have to say that there were some serious restrictions to this camera. Luckily we where able to rent it for five days, so we had some time to play around with it. We spent so much time trying to figure out achieving the best possible image.

These cameras have low resolutions. This one was the highest we could find at 480 by 640. This is lower than DV resolution. So I was really worried that quality of the image wasn’t going to be strong enough. On top of that, the camera isn’t meant for recording long takes. It’s meant for looking at pipes in walls and electrical circuits. We had to do some serious testing to figure out how to even get a proper usable image to drive. My director of photography, Mike LeBlanc, put in so much time in figuring it out. These cameras are not used for creative purposes. Boring stuff I know.

Even though we still had time to prepare, we still ended up wasting the first third of our shoot day on technical problems alone. It was a major stress, but then it all turned around. Once we got up and running it became one of the smoothest shoots I ever worked on. I couldn’t believe losing such a good chunk of our day didn’t end in disaster. I caught up and was able to get almost everything I wanted. That never happens for me. Normally when you shoot, you have long breaks in between shots because the grips and the lighting crew need time to set up. It takes forever. There was no lighting crew. It was amazing!