Inspired by Lord of the Flies, Institute For Eyes return to the world of those standing on the cusp of adulthood – which they so effectively mined in The First Dead Lies – albeit this time set in the dangerous landscape of electronic dance artist Machinedrum’s Vapor City, for dark promo Gunshotta. The duo’s Luke Seomore explains how they married a fascination with William Golding’s classic novel’s themes to Machinedrum’s dystopian modern setting.
Travis Stewart (the man behind Machinedrum) imagined his album as the soundtrack to this world he created after having a series of vivid dreams; the album references places in this mythical imagined world, Vapor City. Gunshotta Avenue is supposed to be this dark, dangerous place within Vapor City. That fed into our idea, taking the original themes and embracing this idea of Gunshotta Avenue, a place of shadows and the sense of constant threat hiding down dark alleyways. Other influences were 1980s New York, John Carpenter films and classic street photography. We wrote a basic script, but a lot of the action was improvised with our young cast – who are all non-professionals. They managed to channel the bonds and reveal how the groups becomes more fragmented later within the story really beautifully.
David Procter our cinematographer was really vital to creating the atmosphere, we filmed in one location in Hackney Wick but the art directors Ben Lack and Sam Waters together with David’s compositions provided a wider visual canvas. All post was created at the Glassworks, Matt Hare did a stunning job on the grade and the post work was really elegantly handled by Warren Moore, who developed all the lights at the end digitally. We wanted to evoke the English romantic painter John Martin in the atmosphere within those last shots.
After the shoot we kept the skull, I put in just outside my window but had to move it because it was freaking out my cat.
