"The love affair that the camera has with Paula throughout all three videos"
This is extracted from: http://www.northerntransmissions.com/interview/interview-simon-lock-terrace/ where Alice Severin interviews Simon Lock from terrace.
We reproduce here the part of the interview that talks explicitly about the 3 videos:
NT: “Cote D’Azur” is a great track, with that jazzy pop keyboard sound. How did that song come about? And of course it was your first video as well. Entertainment Weekly gave it a rave review. It’s got that summery, vacation at the beach feel. At the end, when the music fades out and you can hear the waves hitting the shore – it just takes you away.
SL: That’s the genius of Marc Alcover of Spain. All the videos were shot in Mallorca, but made to look as though it was the south of France.
“Cote D’Azur” is funny. That song started about two years ago. I had heard a new Cut Copy song, and I said oh shit, they’ve just done exactly what I wanted to do. And I was frustrated but I had this idea for a song, and I sent it to Chris, who used to be in the band, and he said, that’s easy, we can do that in five seconds, and he sent me back in ten minutes, what became the chorus loop of “Cote D’Azur”. So it had guitar, and keyboards, and drum loop. And that’s all it was, like eight seconds long. And he said, see how easy that was? And I thought, yeah, I really like that. And then I took the parts, wrote the verse, tweaked a few things, made it sound nice. And the Rhodes piano he used in that, the keyboard, had a really rough sound originally. So just tweaking the settings of the instrument itself, made that really nice smooth, soft 80s sound. And then from there, we put in the chimes and the steel drum, which is really quiet, and all that stuff. The song sounded really good, and we were really happy with it. Then lyrics – lyrics always come last, you know. And that song was the first one that was really completed and the first one that I was really head over heels about, Chris and I co-wrote it together. And always, from the beginning, it was going to be the lead single, because it just had that feel that I wanted, that sun-drenched, heat feeling, you know? When we talked to Marc about the video, we said, it’s supposed to be the south of France. And he said, no problem, I can
make Mallorca look like the south of France. (laughs) And he did.
NT: It does give you that relaxed, wonderful beach holiday feeling. It makes you want to go there right away. Drop everything, and take off.
SL: Yeah. We didn’t want it too exciting. We wanted the person to think you’re on a day date with the girl, like this is somewhere you’d want to be right now. If you’re a guy, you want to be there with her, if you’re a girl, you want to be her. People going to work and getting that, life doing its thing, feeling – we wanted to make a video that kind of looks like a tourism video – hey, look, you could be doing this right now.
[...]
NT: “Exit Stars” was the second single release, and apparently it’s going to be a trilogy, and each of the three songs will have a video?
SL: We just finished, well Marc just finished production on the next single, which is
“Special Place”. It’s really interesting, because we film our parts in Vancouver, and we send them to him in Sweden, he’s there now. And then he usually says, well, it’ll be a while – I’m really busy, and the next day it’s in your mailbox. Boom. (laughing) So the video came through and he just knows exactly what we want, all the time. And it kind of
wraps up the love affair that the camera has with Paula throughout all three videos. In the
first one, it’s very
vacation-y, very beach-y, and in the s
econd one,
she’s being pursued, almost taunted by the ocean, stuff like that.
This one, it’s a happy song. So many people I’ve seen videos for, and they look so sullen and serious. You know? You think, they all look so pissed off. So
we actually just kind of goofed around for our scenes in this video. And first time I’ve ever been in a video, it felt like hey, this is kind of funny.
We made it very light. It’s not the big traumatic wrap up to a trilogy that someone would expect.
NT: That’s a nice change.
SL: Yeah. At our level, starting out and stuff, of course you want to be taken seriously, but you don’t have to be serious all the time. That’s when it becomes like a job. You don’t know what tortures I went through to get my heart out. Like, oh, come on. You can smile once in a while. It’s all right.
NT: Some of the most memorable music videos since they began have been light, even a little silly at times. Or there’s the image of people marching down the street…
SL: Yeah. Richard Ashcroft nailed that video. Fantastic, walked down the street, smacked into people. He got the sullen, angry artist down pat.
NT: That’s so funny you said that, because I was just thinking of that exact video, Bitter Sweet Symphony. That’s one that works so well.
SL: People like videos that tell stories. I don’t. I like videos that just simply look good. You know? It doesn’t have to have some kind of ironic story, it’s not Game of Thrones. You don’t have to have a 700 page script treatment for it. Just make it. We wanted to fly to Spain and be part of it, but I don’t think any of us are the biggest fan of videos or photo shoots. We’re not much to look at. We look like rejects from the Pretty in Pink extras trailer.
[... I reproduce this here because it is a funny coincidence with a detail in Paula's live...]
NT: You’ve got an interesting job – when you’re not making music, you’re an airline pilot. Do you fly everywhere?
SL: I’m international. Mostly the South Pacific, and New York, down to the Caribbean. My main route is usually Los Angeles.
NT: How long have you been flying?
SL: About 21 years now. I started when I was 18. I was a house DJ for years and years, and going to school. And I just carried that through, and I’ve been flying ever since.
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