A Hidden Gem At This Year's MTV VMAs: Duck Sauce's 'It's You'

This year's 'NSYNC reunion, er, MTV Video Music Awards is set to invade my Brooklyn neighborhood by way of the much-debated Barclays Center this coming Sunday. Sadly, I guess my invitation got lost in the mail. And I won't be watching it on TV, because I don't have cable, and if I did, I'd probably be watching reruns of Sister Wives instead. But I figured I'd check out the list of this year's contenders anyway. 

[Side note: How weird is it that MTV still even has music video awards?]

Of course, scattered throughout the categories are this year's viral pop videos that I’d expect to be nominated -- Robin Thicke’s controversy-causing video for "Blurred Lines," Miley Cyrus’s rebellious anthem “We Can’t Stop,” and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ novelty-esque “Thrift Shop” (currently at 146 million, 151 million, and 404 million YouTube views, respectively, at the time of publication).

But there are some less-watched gems to be found tucked away in the more “professional” categories, too -- you know, the ones that don't make it to air. Like this one, from the DJ duo Duck Sauce, which is nominated for “Best Visual Effects.” 

I emailed the director Philip Andelman -- who made the video with the production company Royal Post -- about the concept behind the video and it's dancing cornrows.

Katie Bishop: How did you come up with the wacky barber shop concept for the video?

Phillip Andelman: There's an undeniable barbershop quartet feeling to the main sample in the song. At first I tried to steer clear of it and started down the path of a narrative involving a heartbroken young man who leaps to his death only to bounce back without bones, dancing around town all boneless. But when I couldn't figure out how to continue the video over the length of the track, I kept coming back to the idea of the barbershop quartet.

Years ago I'd thought of doing a video that was entirely stop-motion animation of cornrows turning into patterns and pictures and once I locked in on that I just spent a week thinking of all the other absurd things that could happen inside a barbershop and one idea led to another.

KB: The video is nominated for “best visual effects” at this year’s VMAs. How big of an endeavor was it to make the cornrows dance and the eyeballs move around like that? Was it all done digitally?

PA: Everything was done digitally (or stop motion) though there was a lot of preparation that went into each shot on set. For the cornrows we shot the head of a bald person, then of a person with cornrows in the exact same place. In post we removed each cornrow individually and placed it on the bald person's head, distorting them frame by frame.

The eyeballs were much easier: for this we had each patron look left, right, up and down and then placed one take on one side and another take in the other. The smokestack effect was created in-camera with little bits of afro on fishing lines, and then amplified and tweaked in post. The afro opening up to reveal the disco ball was all meant to be done in-camera but the mechanism for our fake afro failed us and we had to build that all in post unfortunately.

KB: The video is very beat driven -- a lot of the movements and effects are synced up to it. Why was that important for this particular song?

PA: In a dance track such as this one the beat is all you have. The video needs to sync up perfectly in the same way that another video trying to convey the emotion behind a poignant narrative needs to have the dramatic beats line up with the lyrics and melody.

KB: Were there any older music videos that you took inspiration from when making this video?

PA: Nope. But I did watch Chris Rock's documentary on barber shops beforehand!