“Big Sexy” the new music video from Berlin-based musician Jackie Moontan is out featuring hippopotamuses, vintage cameras and whipped cream.
We had a chat to the woman behind the camera, director, Megan Courtis, and found out about her creative process and her secret love of supermarkets!
Megan: I come from a fine art/theatre background and studied performance and visual art (Theatre) at the University of Brighton. Shortly after graduating, I moved to Berlin in search of exciting artistic opportunities.
My creative process typically stems from thinking in images. I find a lot of ideas come to me when I’m doing weekend activities, like browsing the euro shop, shaving my legs or mastering my jelly making skills. For this video, I challenged myself to make a jelly butt (a life size butt sculpture), I went to every supermarket in Berlin and panic bought a bunch of packets of Dr Oetker’s jelly, just in case they ran out! It was here in the supermarket that I also got really inspired, buying latex washing up gloves, washing lines, cake decorations and so on.
The visual language for the video evolved from imagining installations like worlds, sets and how they were styled down to the T. Often times, I write characters into the scenes which helps shape my narrative through the animation of the space itself and the objects housed inside. I enjoy writing for film and theatre and love to sculpt every part of my idea, being behind the lens both composing and directing the shots is where I feel most fulfilled.For “Big Sexy” I experimented with analogue film and I chose to shoot using two analogue cameras. I prefer the aesthetic, the DIY nature and the process over digital. Although longer, it’s much more rewarding.
The song itself is about a Moonman and a hippopotamus. A meeting, a love story and the acceptance of each other’s bodies and differences. I was bathing a lot at the time during winter, you know, cos it’s cold in Berlin and I’m a water sign. The song is about hippos, they’re also semi aquatic creatures that bathe often… So, naturally, I pitched the idea about the wet room element and Jackie happily agreed to sit in a cherry scented bath bomb infused bathtub for part of the shoot day.
For the green screen jungle mating dance scenes – Jackie was watching a lot of youtube videos of bird mating dances and was fascinated by these colorful birds of paradise. So he practiced interpretative dance routines/choreography and sort of auditioned these ideas over to me via mobile.
The cream on top of Natalia’s boobs isn’t real, it’s shaving foam, we like to keep it kid friendly.
Megan is currently working full time as an art director, directing, conceptualising and producing commercial short form video content at Freunde von Freunden.
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