Maria Sosa Betancor travelled to South Corea to direct the new Yall music video starring longboarder Hyojoo.
Birdwoman for
Paloma Wool
by María Sosa Betancor
Paloma told me on a Wednesday that she wanted a video to show the last garments she was going to produce for the summer season. We had to shoot it the following Sunday with a zero euro budget, in a room with a mattress and a girl as main protagonist. Even though it wasn’t exactly what we wanted, it all seemed to indicate that the video was going to end up becoming a succession of beautiful frames of a pretty girl doing nothing, and that made me a bit sad because something like Paloma Wool doesn’t deserve a thing like that.
We had pretty clear visual references that worked with our total lack of budget, so I tried to come up with something that resembled a story. What worried me the most was that in such a short period of time it was going to be hard to find someone who could actually act, so I started thinking about mad strategies that could help us avoid that problem.
Initial visual references
After stepping on very tricky ground, I remembered a recent dream in which I was trying to talk to the guy I liked and all that came out of my mouth were absurd noises. And, for some reason, I directly linked that dream with the reincarnation of an animal inside a human being. I’d love to be able to say I got inspiration from something much more transcendental for such a weird result, but no, that’s the way it really went.
With this idea in mind, infinite things could happen, but to be faithful to the general attitude, I thought it was important not to talk about big moral human dilemmas, and rather stick with more banal and, above all, easier to film stuff.
Actress Indra Zabala in a photo taken by Paloma
The shooting was very coherent with the rest of the process: we were Fran (DOP), Elisa (Make Up), Paloma and me. The only moment in which the whole thing seemed a real shooting was when Fiona came to bring us some lights for the coloured faces scenes. The rest of the time it looked like a pyjama party.
The end of the day. Fran (DOP), María (director) and Pau (inhabitant of the house) right before falling asleep
Fran, Paloma, María and Pau, asleep