Music Videos

Artist and director, Alex Da Corte, created the concept for St. Vincent’s “New York” music video, which was to create a beautifully abstract rendering of New York City. The video was shot over five days in Manhattan and Brooklyn between studio set-ups and practical locations. The majority of the scenes were created in studio but production also had to take over Astor Place, a deli in Manhattan, and Forrest "Frosty" Myers “The Wall” sculpture at Broadway and Houston Street. A large custom backdrop was erected at Astor Place which was extended digitally in post production while digital green smoke was added as well. A crowd gathered to watch the shoot as a very strong PA would start the sculpture spinning before St. Vincent walked into the shot and kept it going. 

The timelapse shot of the wall had to be filmed three times before the cloud conditions created the right effect. The time lapse team used a special robotic arm that created the incremental zoom out over the span of each 18 hour shoot. The trajectory of the sun was then recreated with lights on a moving crane inside a studio in order to composite Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent) into the shot. 

For the keyboard shot, Annie, who plays by ear, was trying to figure out what keys on the keyboard would be the correct notes without being able to hear them. We ended up finding a piano tutorial on youtube by a very cool teenager in England who broke it down for her. We contacted her to thank her for the help and her reaction was one of the best moments from the entire shoot.

We worked with choreographer Kate Watson Wallace for the shoot as well. She extended her time on the production to also choreograph a new version of the sequence in the video that ended up being used for St. Vincent’s live performance on Late Night with Stephen Colbert a week later along with the set pieces.

The video was named one of the “Top Ten Best Music Videos of the Year” by Pitchfork.