HRVY finds himself trapped in a neon dystopia in Matthias Hoene's video for Me Because Of U.

The promo follows the artist as he escapes the harsh realities of his life as a tormented teen, and transports to a futuristic universe filled with AR junkies, surreal noodle-slurpers, and flying cars...

Cinematic and packed full of high-energy set pieces, the video is the first in a two-part series, with the final segment coming later in the year. 

MATTHIAS HOENE: 

Before we knew it, we found ourselves in Johannesburg: the perfect location for dystopian futures, dry deserts and gritty urbania.

“I love making films that teleport the viewer to magical places. For me it’s a lot of fun to play ‘what ifs’ when creating new worlds and to extrapolate current issues into future canvases. HRVY was looking for a feature film director to collaborate with, and approached me with the idea of making two music videos back-to-back that tell one continuous story. He wanted to tell a story about escaping the drudgeries of everyday life to a shiny neon future, followed by a trip through a gritty Mad Max desert world. I fleshed out his ideas and before we knew it, we found ourselves in Johannesburg: the perfect location for dystopian futures, dry deserts and gritty urbania.

"Working with Robot.TV and our service producer Liam Johnson, we found some amazing locations like a hotel that was abandoned in the 80s, with eery modernist receptions, abandoned restaurants and empty rooftop pools. In short, the perfect location for our 2087 Johannesburg future party.

"Johannesburg is an edgy and cool party town, and we managed to find lots of really interesting local characters to populate our futuristic landscape. Together with local choreographer Blayz’e we staged two awesome dance routines. DOP Fabian Vettiger did an amazing job creating neon-drenched visuals and using vintage Cineovision Xtal anamorphics to capture an organic and unusual look.

"Our costume designer Neo Serati not only had to dress all the key artists but our scores of background extras to look like they’re straight from the future. Our production designer Wayne Smith conjured up miracles on a tight budget and finally Max Colt and his team at F-Render completed 60 VFX shots in record time. With a hectic shoot schedule we needed a lot of sound clean-up and sound design for which Joe Munday pulled the rabbit out of the hat. The final lick of beautiful colour came courtesy of Joseph Bicknell at Company3."