videoKhruangbin 'A Love International' by Scott DungateAfter making two award-winning videos for Khruangbin, Scott Dungate reunites with the Texan band for a third time - and the video for A Love International will surely be attracting more honours. A slightly surreal comedy in the beautiful location of a beach in Thailand, with a great cast of young performers, it's an absolute delight.This is a story of blossoming love, where a young local lad is attempting to woo a young tourist girl on a pontoon just off the beach, having arrived by banana boat (and bearing a gift, the local dish of mango sticky rice) - but then a gang of other local kids also arrive to disrupt their innocent fun.Dungate extends this sweetly comic world by populating the beach itself with an eccentric bunch of sunworshippers - a Chinese tour group in facekinis, gym boys, lounge lizards, cosmetic tourists and locals - presented in an single ambitious tracking shot. It's the latest example of an alignment of complementary styles - Dungate's warmth in his attention on characters in different surroundings around the world, and Khruangbin's distinctive sound, influenced by global music of various genres. An experienced and much-travelled advertising creative-turned-director, Dungate first met Laura Lee, the band's bass player, when she worked for a brief time at Weiden & Kennedy in London, before becoming a fulltime rock musician. And it appears they have been on the same page every since when it comes to the band's videos. In So We Won't Forget, Dungate managed to tell the terribly sad story of a Japanese father cycling to a roadside shrine to his deceased child in an uplifting way; for Two Fish And An Elephant, he devised a surreal London-set thriller-cum-dance film. So essentially, the new video is the band and director's most straightforwardly joyful collaboration.A Love International is one of Khruangbin's gentle yet sophisticated instrumental tracks, and Dungate has revealed that for the video the band wanted something innocent and sweet in tone, and visually involving water in some way. The song also cues sounds reminiscent of spaghetti westerns at times, which then inspired shots in the video - like the extreme eye close-ups and the cowboy stance shots, when the young couple are in a standoff with the gang of rivals. It was also based on Dungate's own experiences growing up in seaside caravan parks in Australia, but put through a Thai lens working with the local production partners. Casting was clearly key for this project, and finding the right leads with an 'innocent chemistry' was crucial, says Dungate, but also the supporting gang of kids was important to add humour. Remarkably, the film was shot all in a single day, on location at Saikaew Beach in Thailand, with cinematography by Mexican DoP Diego Garcia, using a RED camera and Cooke lenses. It was then edited in London by Paul Hardcastle at Trim, who delivers a masterclass in editing a comic narrative."It was great fun making this sweet, slightly surreal story of romance, rivalry and mango sticky rice," says Dungate. "True to the title, A Love International was pulled together by talented people all over the world, from Bangkok to New York to London to Amsterdam to Singapore to Mexico City and beyond... and I think you feel that in the film."
David Knight - 10 months ago