Caviar

Director

Keith Schofield

Keith Schofield brings his absolute A game to his hilarious, outrageous new video&nbsp;for A-Trak and Armand Van Helden's team-up Duck Sauce.There's clubbing, celebrities, sex and drugs... and there are also timecards, Wikipedia, a thought-provoking discussion about the merits of Simulation Theory. And buttholes. In fact, the video for Mesmerize may be the ultimate Keith Schofield video.Framed as a detailed animatic for a video that could not be made due to prevailing shooting regulations in the time of&nbsp;Covid-19, Schofield employs&nbsp;fairly basic digital tools to realise a supremely irreverent, often outrageous&nbsp;stream of consciousness narrative. That touches upon some of his favourite preoccupations seen in his previous videos, in terms of subject matter and also technique - particularly the use of&nbsp;3D animation and stock footage in ways it was never intended.&nbsp;Schofield's equally&nbsp;transgressive&nbsp;<a href="https://www.promonews.tv/videos/2011/10/26/duck-sauce-big-bad-wolf-keith-schofield/10607" target="_blank">Duck Sauce video for Big Bad Wolf</a> gets a blink-and-you'll-miss&nbsp;nod too.&nbsp;The deconstruction of the creative process and the animation style is the key to&nbsp;allowing Schofield's imagination free reign. But a tenuous internal logic&nbsp;and narrative thread manages to hold even through all the craziness: a&nbsp;satire on club and celebrity culture - essentially vacuous and boring - turns into the simulations of A-Trak and Van Helden discussing the semantics of existence&nbsp;with their simulation celeb mates. That&nbsp;gets faster as the track leads to the drop, and to get the whole thing you&nbsp;need to freeze frame, and no doubt pick up some 'bonus' images. And it all&nbsp;culminates in the indelible image of the camera (and therefore the viewer) disappearing up their backsides... more than once.&nbsp;Only&nbsp;Keith Schofield could take you on this journey. Okay,&nbsp;perhaps only Schofield would want to. It's just so good that he is out there, occasionally making videos like this. That is, of course, if any of us do actually exist...

United States

Dance

Duck Sauce 'Mesmerize' by Keith Schofield

Duck Sauce - Mesmerize (Official Music Video)

Keith Schofield is playing with your head. He has done this many times before, of course,&nbsp;as with Darwin Deez&#39;s You Can&#39;t Be My Girl&nbsp;(Darwin inside some cheesy stock footage films), and the notorious Duck Sauce&#39;s Big Bad Wolf (genitalia replaced by human heads). But the video for Stylo G and Jacob Plant&#39;s Bike Engine seems to come from a whole new realm of meta.It starts out as a characteristically outrageous Schofield scenario:&nbsp;a pair of female legs with no upper half&nbsp;becomes the target of a group of men with no legs. Then it&nbsp;goes somewhere else:&nbsp;women protest online about the video&#39;s content, then in person, and it turns out they have no legs either.&nbsp;Finally, it seems to gets personal: Schofield himself appears directing the video, and ultimately haunted by the online reaction to the video. Confused? You obviously haven&#39;t seen it yet.[vidtoken data:0]So we got in touch with Keith to find out all about how the Bike Engine video came together.&nbsp;&nbsp;PROMONEWS: How did you come up with the idea? Did the YouTube reaction to one of your previous videos inspire this one?Keith Schofield:&nbsp;My last video had a bit of a slow burn and I think a lot of audiences tuned out before the funny came in. So this time, I was determined to try to hook the audience in from the very beginning. Even though the first 20 seconds is clichéd, there&rsquo;s still a great ass. Eventually I arrived at the Torso-less Ass and Half-Bros; and then the riding scene, and kind of stopped. I kept thinking about how I&rsquo;d sort of already done this video before, and what would people think - and it just took off from there.<blockquote>&quot;I&rsquo;ve gone for high concepts and gimmicks. Nothing was personal, nothing was revealing. It took me a while to actually realize this.&quot;</blockquote>Also, credit to BUG for doing the live reads of YouTube comments. They&rsquo;ve really cemented the idea that music videos continue to live and grow as part of an ongoing conversation, rather than as these self-contained finished products.[imgtoken data:1]Is there a serious point here about it becoming more difficult to create comedy that may offend? And when did you decide to cast yourself in the video?Since I&rsquo;ve began doing music videos, I&rsquo;ve always approached it from the perspective of what will reach an audience. Often I would be working with bands without huge followings, so the only way to get the work seen is if it somehow transcended the fanbase. So I&rsquo;ve gone for high concepts and gimmicks, always in the name of going viral. But in the process, &quot;IVe. Nothing was personal, nothing was revealing. It took me a while to actually realize this. And so I was drawn to the idea of putting myself into the video.Of course, because I think in gimmicks, I came to the conclusion to that the best way to do that was to literally put myself in the video and show all of my insecurities on screen. And maintain a little bit of ironic detachment. One step at a time, I suppose.[imgtoken data:2]<blockquote>&quot;I came to the conclusion to that the best thing was to literally put myself in the video and show all of my insecurities on screen.&quot;</blockquote>Was it easy to get people on board with the idea?My treatment was basically a beat-for-beat version of the final product; and they were on board from the beginning. It was one of those jobs where we had to pull a ton of favours so I&rsquo;m not sure it would have happened if they had any inclination to try and steer it into another direction.We have a glimpse of the green screen legs giving away how it&#39;s done [in fact it&#39;s more complicated than that; the actors wear fake torsos that hang around their necks]&nbsp;What was the trickiest aspect for making this work?We struggled trying to figure out the dancing scene. We finally came upon a solution involving a crewmember dressed completely in green holding the actor by his waist and then allowing him to fall off.[imgtoken data:3]However, once we got to set, the crewmember wasn&rsquo;t wearing a proper green screen suit, but rather a disturbing mishmash of leftover green cloth. We called him Green Ku Klux Klansman. He is the stuff of nightmares.[imgtoken data:4][imgtoken data:5]Were you worried that people would react badly to the video? Have you been reading the YouTube comments? Any surprises?A lot of people have left nasty comments on YouTube, but I simply assume they&rsquo;re playing along with the characters in the video. And if they leave a nice comment, then that means they like the video. I can&rsquo;t lose![imgtoken data:6]<blockquote>&quot;A lot of people have left nasty comments on YouTube but I simply assume they&rsquo;re playing along.&quot;</blockquote>

Why Keith Schofield's "ironic detachment" led him to make Bike Engine

Stylo G x Jacob Plant - Bike Engine

Stylo G x Jacob Plant 'Bike Engine' by Keith Schofield

Keith Schofield brings his postmodern weirdness to the fore in this bizarre, multi-layered video for Stylo G &amp; Jacob Plant.Playing on his own previous works in which sex and VFX intertwine in some hideously brilliant ways, Schofield brings us a video within a video within a video here that breaks the fourth, fifth, and sixth wall, and gets funnier with each development.Delving head-first into themes of sexual representation, comment culture, and working as a director (we end up with Keith himself, grimly&nbsp;contemplating what he has unleashed onto the world),&nbsp;this video is a gift that keeps on giving. You may even be offended.

Alex Brinkman

Jasper Thomlinson

John Hassay

Destroy All Entertainment

Adam Egypt Mortimer

Amanda Mortimer

Dance, Electro

For&nbsp;Joywave&#39;s Somebody New, Keith Schofield takes the phenomenon of skateboard video game glitches, and takes it to a whole new dimension of tomfoolery.&nbsp;It starts like your standard skate video - sort of. But the deadpan comedy of having the band perform while skating quickly advances into some bonkers parallel universe of impossible skate tricks - and super-disasters. And then we&#39;re moving into convulsing heads, contorted bodies and skateboards slicing through torsos.&nbsp;Well, it&nbsp;is Keith, after all.&nbsp;The daunting VFX task was accomplished entirely in house by Caviar&rsquo;s post team &ndash; who worked hard to translate the goofy CGI video game inspiration to a photo-realistic finish, and make another Keith&nbsp;Schofield classic.&nbsp;Regular skateboard videos will never be as cool again...&nbsp;

Kelly Bowen

Tova Dann

Isaac Bauman

Melissa Goul McNealy

Bridget O'Neill

Tiffani Manabat

Andreas Hasle

Corentin De Saedeleer

Sandro Paoli

Nicolas Sainte-Rose

Terry Huynh

Emmanuelle Pellan

Oden Roberts

Mark Sarkissian

Hollywood Records

Indie, Pop

Joywave 'Somebody New' by Keith Schofield

Joywave "Somebody New"

How would you define what love is? Keith Schofield has clearly&nbsp;been giving it some thought. In his video for Bastille&#39;s Vs Grades&#39; Torn Apart, he toys with the notion of the acceptable and appropriate media-presentation of love and romance, who should be doing it with who. Even what it&nbsp;should actually look like.&nbsp;The result is jaw-dropping -&nbsp;hilarious, outrageous, brilliantly done. The performers in a couple&#39;s love dance morph continously&nbsp;into different individuals - at first within a group of bland Hollywood&nbsp;actor-types. Then it gets a lot weirder.&nbsp;Frankly, you&nbsp;could watch it 20 times without being slightly spooked by the introduction of, for example, the featureless 3D animated man. And then there&#39;s the alien genetalia...&nbsp;Acceptable norms, even of sexual positions, are well and truly chewed up, and spat out.In a way, Torn Apart is&nbsp;a companion piece to last year&#39;s brilliant Darwin Deez video for&nbsp;You Can&#39;t Be My Girl - where Keith Schofield&nbsp;placed the geeky&nbsp;Darwin tantalisingly close but still out of&nbsp;reach of&nbsp;the mainstream perfection, as defined by&nbsp;stock library footage. The delivery is&nbsp;fiercer here - but both prove that Keith Schofield&#39;s comic genius is no better&nbsp;served than by the music video medium. Where would we be without that cocktail of&nbsp;VFX-augmented visual humour and genuine satire?&nbsp;Long may it continue. Hats off to&nbsp;Bastille, commissioner James Hackett and Virgin EMI for this wonderfully bold commission.&nbsp;And thank god for Keith Schofield. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

United Kingdom

Adrianne McCurrach

Damian Acevedo

Carlos Aldana

Chris Pearson

James Hackett

Virgin EMI

Katie Dolan

Kim Dellara

Bastille Vs. Grades 'Torn Apart' by Keith Schofield

Bastille - Torn Apart (Bastille VS. Grades)

Keith Schofield gets together with Darwin Deez for the video for You Can&#39;t Be My Girl, and the results are almost predictably marvellous.In order to highlight the fact that Darwin is rather a quirky, leftfield type of guy - an outsider - Keith puts him in an environment that could not be more mainstream or less edgy. This is stock-footage world - full of pretty, unattainable girls, where Darwin is the observer, doomed to fail to fit in...The pleasure is going through the process of realising that Darwin has been expertly comped in top-spec recently-produced stock footage - and as in other vids that have used a variation of the technique, sensing that the footage is weirdly parodying itself. Or that Schofield has possibly slipped in a couple of set-ups himself. Who, for instance, knew there was sexual stock footage..Keith -&nbsp;who secured this commission while in London, between his more regular commercial assignments - always changes things up. Darwin&#39;s frustration lasts a lifetime, but then he is allowed to let rip within a more accessible version of non-reality. And don&#39;t be fooled by the false ending...In short, unlike the singer&#39;s never-going-to-be-his-girlfriends, Keith and Darwin were made for each other.

Laura Tunstall

Ben Fordesman

Antoine Vermeesch

Stephen Richards

Lucky Number Music

Darwin Deez 'You Can't Be My Girl' by Keith Schofield

Darwin-Deez-'You-Can't-Be-My-Girl'-by-Keith-Schofield

Keith Schofield helms the video for Electric Guest's This Head I Hold - his first since the awesome Big Bad Wolf - in which the ball of angst that is Electric Guest's Asa Taccone will do anything to avoid auditioning in front of the scary judges at a very odd talent show where the secrets of all dance moves are revealed. So he runs off to the desert, and becomes a sort of hobo/Jedi...
At least he's not beating up people, as in EG's <a href="" target="_blank">American Daydream</a> vid (the one directed by his brother, SNL/Lonely Planet guy Jorma Taccone)...

http://www.youtube.com/watchv=nVSiwMVaKe4

Electric Guest 'This Head I Hold' by Keith Schofield

Electric-Guest-'This-Head-I-Hold'-by-Keith-Schofield

"Why do all dance videos have to have the same escapist fantasies, girls in bikinis and cheesy choreography In this clip we're focusing on what truly matters to man: his penis." - DUCK SAUCE.Keith Schofield's brilliant, outrageous and very, very funny promo for Duck Sauce's single Big Bad Wolf is about to burn up the internet. Band members Armand Van Helden and A-Trak become 'crotchfaces' with increasingly hilarious results.

Somesuch

Tim Nash

Marc Bowen

Duck Sauce 'Big Bad Wolf' by Keith Schofield

UK-Music-Video-Awards-2012-–-all-of-last-night's-winners!

Cut Copy's classy, OMD-esque Need You Now is now backed Keith Schofield's rather wonderful new video - in the trademark Schofield-style of bonkers idea delivered with fiendishly clever, head-scratching execution. 
Keith expresses the heroic power of sport (or sports), but things get confused and, of course, it's all a metaphor anyway... More stuff on Keith's inspirations at <a href="Cut Copy's Need You Now by Keith Schofield" target="_blank">Stereogum</a>, where the video was premiered last week.

Cut Copy’s Need You Now by Keith Schofield

Cut-Copy’s-Need-You-Now-by-Keith-Schofield

The up-for-fun Montreal electro pop duo's new single is called Don't Turn The Lights On. So Keith riffs on the subject of darkness and eyes for all its worth, having lots of fun and messing with your head. 
In fact, you'll have to think quite hard to figure out how he's done most of the visual tricks in this. That is, if you can stop yourself being thoroughly entertained for a minute. Fabulous.

Michael Sagol and Jasper Thomlinson

Nick Diaz

Benjamin Bamps

Pia McBain

Chromeo’s Don't Turn The Lights On by Keith Schofield

Chromeo’s-Don't-Turn-The-Lights-On-by-Keith-Schofield

The winners of this year's Antville Music Video Awards have been <a href="http://videos.antville.org/stories/1958007/" target="_blank">announced</a> - as decided in a poll of the famously partisan community of music video fans and industry folks who frequent videos.antville.org.

The winners are: 






Best art direction
Charlotte Gainsbourg &amp; Beck "Heaven Can Wait" Dir. Keith Schofield, PD: Megan Fenton &amp; Philip Godwin

Antville Music Video Awards 2009: the winners

Keith was inspired by pics in his large &#39;found photos&#39; folder, several of which he recreated over the three-day video shoot (one with Charlotte and Beck). Since then it&#39;s been established that a couple were by the artist William Hundley, who&#39;s now been duly credited.And it&#39;s a wonderful thing - beautifully shot by Damian Acevedo. And after <a href="http://www.promonews.tv/2009/10/09/lenny-kravitz-justice%E2%80%99s-let-love-rule-by-keith-schofield/" target="_blank">Let Love Rule</a>, that&#39;s two great &#39;why didn&#39;t anyone do that before&#39; videos that Keith Schofield has made in quick succession.

Michael Sagol, Tom Weissferdt, Emmanuel Guiraud

Megan Fenton, Philip Godwin

Jacquelyn Moran

Dave Hussey

Brandon Parvini

Because Music

Charlotte Gainsbourg feat Beck’s Heaven Can Wait by Keith Schofield

Charlotte Gainsbourg featuring Beck "Heaven Can Wait" (Director's Cut) Director: Keith Schofield

We've had title sequence videos galore. Now, ingeniously, is the 'end credits' video, for the Justice's Lenny Kravitz remix by Keith Schofield. 
Which includes Keith completely nailing the whole trouble with end credits, and possibly when it all really started getting out of hand. He's created the final yards of a mid-Eighties movie, with a Michael J Fox-type lead guy in trademark puffa jacket. It's perfectly pitched - and the credits roll on and on... 
Superb. You can see the version with more 'movie' on Keith's website - and, of course, you can all have all sorts of fun namechecking...

El Niño

Jules Dieng

Steve Buchanan

Xavier De Nauw

Lenny Kravitz & Justice’s Let Love Rule by Keith Schofield

Keith Schofield's new video for NYC rapper Mims is such a great thing you'll enjoy it first without thinking that much about how he did all those wonderful FX. Or possibly because your head can't take it all in.
But suffice to say, it's bloody clever. There's Mims himself gliding across the screen left to right - and then there's all the movement behind him - including slo-mo bodypoppers "scratching" back and forth. And then, to top it all off, there's the 'slit photography' stuff...
With echoes of his vids for <a href="http://keithschofield.com/goose/">Goose</a> and <a href="http://keithschofield.com/1br-video/">One Block Radius</a> - and same track name as his recent video for CSS - Keith has just pushed his envelope once again. What's more, he thoroughly explains how he's doing it with his awesome, idiot-proof <a href="http://keithschofield.com/treatments/mims/">treatment</a>.
He almost makes it look straightforward...

Streetgang Films

Dave Robertson

Bob Carreri

Danny Lockwood

Mims’ Move by Keith Schofield

Just before his outstandingly porno viral for <a href="http://current.com/items/89337913_diesel_sfw_xxx_fashion_firm_makes_cheeky_sfw_porn_ad">Diesel</a>, and the clutch of nominations at the MVAs (in <a href="http://www.promonews.tv/2008/09/29/uk-music-video-awards-2008-%e2%80%93-the-best-video-nominations-in-full/">best rock video and best dance video</a>, and <a href="http://www.promonews.tv/2008/09/29/uk-music-video-awards-2008-%e2%80%93-the-technical-achievement-award-nominations-in-full/">best editing in a video</a>) Keith Schofield's freshest piece was his new Ting Tings video. It would be a shame if in the heat of the moment that went overlooked.
As if! Anyway, Keith shot this video in Chicago and used a portable rear screen projection to follow the band as they walk and drive the city streets.
It was photographed by Streetgang regular Shawn Kim, and Marshall Plante provided the grade, so it looks f*ckin' A. LA's Ingenuity Engine provided the VFX work, so it looks even more, er, A.
And old-style catchy pop tune too - I thought the Ting Tings album was only supposed to have two decent songs on it
More about the Diesel viral soon I daresay.

Gina Leonard

Shawn Kim

Jeremiah Shuff / Dan Dobi

Marshall Plante

Mike O'Keefe

The Ting Tings’ Be The One by Keith Schofield

<a href="http://www.streetgangfilms.com/mv/blasts/bpa/qt.htm">Quicktime movie</a>
[pay]Norman Cook's record for innovative music video high-jinks is a merit badge to be cherished and maintained - even when he slides into a brand new, non-Fatboy Slim incarnation.
So it's a good move to hand the baton to Keith Schofield, who is being increasingly cherished himself for his ability to combine technical curiosity with an impish sense of fun.
And lo and behold, we have lots of naked young people, making things with their private parts. Well, the black bars that cover their bits.
It's a video to do full justice to Norman's recharged creative battery, and he also makes one of his best cameo appearances ever.
He certainly looks invigorated.

Keith Schofield on his video for The BPA's Toe Jam
"I was apprehensive about working with so many unclothed people. I don't think I've even directed a scene with two people kissing. But the project was never meant to be sexual. I pitched it as: 'It's about as erotic as a naked guy streaking through a football game.'
"We had a pretty low turnout for casting, but I was happy with a high percentage of people. We were basically casting on charisma and looks. The censored black bars are a relic of the 70s, and I wanted to capture that all-natural vibe from the decade. So we requested for no tattoos, spray tan, or silicon implants - which may have contributed to our low turn out. But I was really happy with the cast that we ended up with.
"The shoot went really well. Everyone got desensitized to the nudity pretty quickly. All the actors seemed to be having a really fun time; I actually had to ask them to bring down the energy for the party scenes, but good vibes all around.
"It helped that we had a rehearsal day - everyone was dressed in bikinis and swimsuits - so it was in many ways a warmup for the shoot day. I had diagrams for all of the shapes and letters; but it took a while to figure out how to exactly place everyone.
"Believe it or not, I really had a hard time coming up with shapes. In my treatment, I wrote 'the possibilities are endless'. But in truth there are a ton of factors that limit what you can do. People can only bend so far - and I didn't want to ask them to lie on top of each other for the overhead shots.
"One idea I had which was impossible to shoot was to have the entire group slowly spelling out the word FUCK, only to have the entire word censored out with one massive black bar.
"Working with Norman Cook was a lot of fun. I'm a huge music video nerd, and working with an artist who had been responsible for two of Spike Jonze's best videos was truly a thrill.
"It was Norman's idea to do the giant spinning black bar for his cameo, and to his credit, he did his entire cameo all nude. After the shoot, he gave the entire cast and myself tickets to Coachella, where he was playing the following night.
"All in all, this was a really great experience. I think was one of the few times that a video came out almost exactly as I wanted it to. It's been fun seeing it go viral so quickly - although I'm a bit perplexed why so many people would rip the embedded video and repost it - especially under pretentious titles like Censor Bar Art.
"I'm not sure a smiley face and stick figure count as art - patterns, shapes, sure. I wish they would at least give credit to the musicians - I mean, we're doing this to sell albums and concert tickets, right"[/pay]

Marisol Aragon

Brett Juskalian

Jason Lee

New Selecta

The BPA’s Toe Jam by Keith Schofield

(Sony BMG's stylish video commissioner takes time out of his busy schedule to present a few of his current favourites. Appears he has a particular fondness for stuff that didn't cost anything - ed)Things sure ain't what they used to be in the music video world and is seem to get less "like it used to be" every year.Less money, less time. So I've decided to playlist my current favourite zero-to-low budget music videos.Watch here: <a _blank="" href="http://www.youtube.com/watchv=Q6pbZLiLt30">YouTube</a>Watch here: <a _blank="" href="http://www.youtube.com/watchv=rXxLbLvCRrk">YouTube</a>Watch here: <a _blank="" href="http://www.pulsefilms.co.uk/vid/berlinandmccool/mysteryjets.html">Embed</a> Ida Maria Drive Away My Heart Dir. Magnus Renfors Prod co: Filmteknarna, Sweden This is another one of mine. Magnus was recommended to us by the girlfriend of the drummer in the band and he is a revelation. The budget on this job was truly tiny and I honestly have no idea how they managed to get all the costumes, cars and locations. Watch here: <a _blank="" href="http://www.filmtecknarna.se/files/idamaria_web.mov">Quicktime movie</a>Watch here: <a _blank="" href="http://keithschofield.com/wintergreen/">Quicktime movie</a>

Factory Fe

Dan Millar's (Low-Budget) Playlist

Dan-Millar's-(Low-Budget)-Playlist

Promonews Podcast

Keith Schofield

Director

Interviews featuring Keith Schofield

Videos featuring Keith Schofield

2020 (1)

2016 (1)

2015 (1)

2014 (1)

2013 (1)

2012 (1)

2011 (2)

2010 (1)

2009 (4)

2008 (3)

Popular content

Is this your profile?

Feedback

Latest Videos