videoModel Man ft Hamzaa 'Don't Cry' by Theo WatkinsTheo Watkins directs an expressive promo for Model Man featuring Hamzaa. The video follows main character Joshua Ben-Tovim as he trudges through his daily routine. He waters plants, makes toast, and prepares ready meals in a series of mundane vignettes. Spliced between these setups however, are frames of Ben-Tovim performing passionate dance movements, glitching in and out like a technical error. At the midpoint, the character is afforded the chance to perform and live out this dance fantasy, bringing a sense of calm and stillness to his day.It's weirdly satisfying making someone who’s trained in ballet... to stand still most of the day."The idea for this video stemmed from melding a character's mundane, everyday routine with mad and expressive dance elements, representing a character's authentic self bubbling up to the surface, through the mire of everyday life," explains Watkins."It was my first ever dance video, so it felt like a good idea to keep the main routine confined to a specific part of the song, with the rest relying on stillness, composition and deadpan humour, with hints of dance bursting through in mere frames at a time."There was something strange and weirdly satisfying about making someone who’s trained in to a high level ballet and contemporary dance stand still for most of the day."Overall we took a lot of inspiration from a 70’s look, seeking to style the video in a slightly anachronistic manner and create a mysterious, dystopian world of beige and browns for our single character to inhabit."
Rob Ulitski - 29th Nov 2021