Edward John Drake delivers a suitable lofi treatment in his video for Yolanda Be Cool's reading of Rodrguez' iconic Sugar Man.

Shot in LA, Drake uses VHS treatments and retro vintage styling to achieve his aim, resulting in a sympathetic and authentic-looking promo.

EDWARD JOHN DRAKE

"Sugar Man holds this unique, kinetic quality. Rodriguez's original was a reaction to the drug epidemic in the US during the 60's, so we all wanted a piece which held more meaning than a straight up 'summer-loving road trip' video. The final result is, hopefully, a comment on the decentralization of identity today - simply, we don't connect, and will never feel like the person we want to be unless we portray ourselves - and even lie to ourselves - in so many ways.

"Everyone has a friend that lives larger than the truth, and my pitch was nothing more than a cute way to say "Every town needs a Sugar Man, but not every man can handle the sugar." The iconography of the city was important - Los Angeles is the personification of a lot of the tracks themes in a good & bad way. We looked at All That Jazz, The Long Goodbye, and a whole lot of Boogie Nights for cues on how to craft a character in a city, and show the city as a character itself.

"The VHS overlay was always what we had in mind - the guy is are a step of time, and our DoP Jake Ures was instrumental in capturing that archaic sense of movement. Jake turned the crash zoom into an artform.

"We wanted more control over the colour in post than a camcorder or Super 8 would allow, so we shot on an Epic with a Fujinon zoom lens made in the 80's. After the edit we ran it out through a VHS tape and brought it back into the edit suite, hard burned in the transitions, repeated the process, and the final product is what you're seeing in 240p glory".