Tim Saccenti's fabulously off-the-wall video for Franz Ferdinand's Love Illumination taps into the band's evident fondness for surrealism, with a mash-up of scenes, visual effects and band performance, shot in a variety of formats by the masterful Marc Gómez del Moral.

Tim drew from a variety of influences - including the pioneering music videos of Devo and The Residents, as he explains below – before shooting in London. The Love Illumination video was then posted (and generally roughed-up by 1980s technology) in New York. Absolutely splendid. 

Tim Saccenti: "Our initial thoughts on how to approach the "Love Illumination" video was a common love between the band and myself of the absurdist, surrealist videos of acts like The Residents, Devo, and other more conceptual visual artists from the early 1980s.  These artists where huge influences on me visually so being able to delve into these worlds was a real personal pleasure.  

"I cut together an animatic from my collection of rare Bauhaus performance films, some surrealistic 70's Polish fantasy pieces, early 1980s modern dance moments and used this as the springboard to develop the ideas.  The choreographer, Alexandra Reynolds, art director Michelle Sothern, and costume design/stylist Lotta Aspenberg did an fantastic job of evolving these elements.  

"Shot on one day in a London studio, the amazing Marc Gomez del Moral filmed the video on multiple formats, going for a mix of 16mm film, VHS, and a few obscure ones to keep the palette within our late 70's-early 1980's aesthetic.  Marc had some magical lighting effects the elevated the piece, keeping the VFX as much in-camera as possible.  

"As a finishing touch Corey Holms designed vintage text from his personal font archive, which we then ran through a radio shack 1980's video synthesizer to give it our final feel."