Post office boxes didn’t used to be bright red. They used to be a subdued grey, in keeping with the general greyness of the New Zealand Post Office. When NZ Post was born, post office boxes got a lick of red paint and a bold new backdrop was born.
The last NZOA video that took advantage of this setting was Love’s Ugly Children in their “Voodoo Girl” video. That explicitly used the space as a post office box lobby, but with Slim it’s more abstract. The camera hardly ever focuses on the boxes, so the walls become giant crimson slabs of colour, a perfect backdrop for some energetic punks.
In the YouTube description, director Marc Swadel notes the video was “a three way directorial race on this between myself, Slim singer Aaron Hogg, and Italian director Simona Lianza”. Whatever was going on behind the scenes, the finished product doesn’t show it.
The band perform the song in the narrow space, performing to each walls and with different combinations of band members. The camera is usually locked off in the same place, with a few shots near the end taken against a different wall, and a shot of a rotating skull in the middle. Adding a bit of variety, lyrics from the song and random graphics flash up on screen, making it look a lot slicker than a bunch of guys in a post office.
Best bit: “Open a bank account”, commands a random graphic.
Director: Marc Swadel, Aaron Hogg
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision
Next… Otago noir.
A good bit of fun!! Simona – who is in the clip – was my GF at the time and I dissapeared off to Italy with her not long after. I remember we had zero cash..as it was a Wildside clip, and the cash hadn’t arrived in time.// so we ripped a circline tube and ballast off a wall in shades arcade to light the close ups.. and after the shoot Simona mentioned she had 200 USD in her wallet… and she endured some classic gonzo low budget stuff… which could have been avoided!