Behind the Scenes with NZCA LINES and His Self-Directed Video for "New Atmosphere"

Last week we premiered the video for London artist NZCA LINES' upcoming single "New Atmosphere" (watch it above). We called it "a breathtaking vision of uncharted territory. " With the slinky, synth-pop-meets-R&B cut as a soundtrack and basis for the video's narrative, the cinematic short focuses on two lovers colonizing a new planet… or so we thought. In fact the bleakly beautiful land is a future vision of Earth (more on which below), and in real life this video was shot in a quarry in Wales. Michael Lovett—the man behind Nzca Lines—actually directed, produced, and conceived the entire video. Calling this his passion project doesn't quite cover it: Nzca Lines is a perfect union of story, sonics, and visuals, each aspect poured over and meticulously mapped. Where his first, self-titled album was a selection of intriguing, loosely connected vignettes set to pop music, his new material ups the ante, and we wanted to find out more.

So we tracked down Lovett (who is currently on tour with Metronomy) to find out about the making of the video, how he imagines people operate in the event of an unconventional apocalypse, and escaping planet Earth. Turns out there's a lot going on in that brain of his. Check out some awesome behind the scenes pictures below too. It might be Wales but honestly these shots make it seem even more otherworldly and awesome.

Elvis in the house. (On the planet?) How do the visuals complement the song?
My first record was supposed to be a concept album, with lyrics, music, and song titles all intended to give you little snapshots of this bigger story. Even though I had some idea of what this narrative was, I didn't flesh it out for myself or seek to definite it. In fact, this ambiguity was kind of the point. For the new material, however, I wanted a narrative that was much clearer and more focused— the idea was to really try and push myself to communicate, to spell it out. I also wanted to try and create a visual accompaniment myself, to not draw a line of distinction between the music and the visual side of the narrative. What you see in the video—the places, characters, buildings, names, actions, content—is all part of a world the rest of this new Nzca Lines material relates to and has a place within. Just setting up the soil sampling equipment. How does "New Atmosphere" fit into the bigger picture the new collection of songs? Are these two adventurers recurring characters in your songs?
Yes, these two characters feature in a story which encompasses the album as a whole. However, it's worth pointing out that this isn't an alien planet we're seeing in the video. It's Earth, but an Earth so far into the future that civilizations unimaginable to us have risen and fallen, and the Sun has begun expanding into the red giant stage that will eventually consume the inner planets of our solar system. This the setting for the record. We're talking way into the future; the shape of the continents has changed, and half the atmosphere has been stripped away by various manmade and natural causes. Half the planet is covered by a city called Cairo-Athens, an endless sprawl that circles the coast of one of the major continents. The city is a patina of ancient monuments, built upon itself to the point where its own history is suffocating.

The inhabitants of Cairo-Athens languish in a kind of ennui, waiting for the inevitable and tangible End of the World. They lose themselves in inebriation and excess; sex, drugs, parties… it's a funky apocalypse, not particularly dystopian. They're depressed, but they're also having a good time. However, there is no ambition, no urge to create or look to the future. The city is stagnating.

Now, on the other side of the planet things are quite different. Here, scientists and engineers who fled Cairo-Athens are working to repair the damaged atmosphere and create a new land, a place where they can live in the spirit of hope and creation—despite their inevitable demise at the hands of our Sun. Or, who knows, maybe they'll figure out a way to leave. But the point of this unconventional apocalypse is, this is all we've got: for all our fantasizing, we may never leave this planet. We should make the best of what we have.

Cairos-Athens.

What's the story of "New Atmosphere" specifically?
The story in New Atmosphere is actually a kind of ending and beginning in one, and from there we can work backwards. The male character was dissatisfied with life in Cairo-Athens, and set out to see whether the myths of these "new lands" were in fact true. Upon reaching the damaged lands, he meets and falls in love with the woman we see, who is a scientist working to prepare terraforming machinery that will make the atmosphere breathable once again. However, tragedy strikes; just before their work is complete and the atmosphere is due to be terraformed, her breathing mask fails and she dies. The man is unable to save her, and she dies in his arms. This song sees him watching sunrise alone, lost in memories as he breathes in the air she worked so hard to create.

Is this the first video that you've ever directed? Do you see yourself doing more of this in the future?

Yes, this is the first video i've directed. I had some involvement with the video for "Okinawa Channels," but that was basically directed by Robert Self, who shot a lot of "New Atmosphere," and Leo Stamps, who has experience making films and whose help was invaluable in making NA. I initially became very inspired by Daft Punk's Interstella 5555, and wanted to make a visual album with an animation for every song. This quickly boiled down to an animation for one track, and then, at the advice of Jonny Hardstaff (an amazing director who made the promos for Prometheus), it became something I would shoot live. I already had some contacts like Beau Burrows (3D compositing and animation) and Isabella Lopez-Smith (costumes) who had got in touch because they liked the first album, so I capitalized on this by assembling a team who could do stuff I never could by myself.

I'd love to do more of this in the future, it was a great experience. It was also incredibly time consuming though, so I'd probably figure out a concept and an approach that was a little more straightforward. Also I'd love a proper budget. "New Atmosphere" was made for roughly £1000 of my own money, plus a small, but generous contribution from London based promoters The Notewell.

What were your visual influences for this video? Were there any particular films or music videos that you pulled from?

Interstella 5555—as I mentioned—was a big inspiration. I was really excited by the songs coming to life in that way, and it was something I wanted to try and recreate. I loved the feeling of the El Guincho "Bombay" video by CANADA and how it felt like excerpts from a full-length film, which obviously influenced the structure of NA, together with the cinematic feeling of Shabazz Palaces' videos by Kahlil Josef. Other than that, it's quite obviously a tour round the houses of my favorite sci-fi! Stalker, Solaris, Close Encounters, 2001, all that kind of stuff.

Tell us about the shoot itself. It was set in a quarry in Wales right? How did you find this place and what was it like directing the two lead actors?

Yes, the main body of the video is filmed in two different quarries on Anglesey, Wales. That location really saved the project! I owe them to Isabella Lopez-Smith, who handmade the amazing costumes and masks. She actually grew up near there and told me about these crazy abandoned mines that were used by the BBC to film stuff like Doctor Who back in the day (I also have a feeling that the video for "Tonto" by Battles was filmed in the slate quarry).

We were incredibly lucky with the weather—Wales is not known for being clear and sunny. To tell the truth, it was the most tired I think I've ever been. I didn't realize that there were cats at the house, and I'm allergic, so I didn't really sleep. I'd get about an hour and then just go make sandwiches for everyone or go for a walk in the fields at 5 AM and try to breath. It was a complete uncertainty and unknown going up there, but the locations are amazing and between me, Leo (1st AD) and Robert (DP) we worked out how to approach the shots I needed.

The two leads, Davo and Marene, were amazing. Davo is an old friend and sometime actor (among many other skills), and Marene is actually a professional actress I got in touch with through him. Both lovely. Davo actually cut his hands pretty badly after I got him to repeatedly scramble down the slope at the beginning of the video, the ground was very uneven and he's just wearing plimsolls [flimsy sneakers]. I felt pretty bad about that.

It sounds silly, but shooting the part where Marene "dies" was actually genuinely upsetting. I'd never been involved in anything like that before and it was pretty intense for a first timer. In general, it was a bloody brilliant experience and something I'll never forget.

Discussing the death scene…

Space travel has been a hot topic for years, but if feels like recently it's unavoidable, in the news, in film, art, and music. I suppose this is in part because in our lifetime space is going to be accessible to people other than astronauts, and because everyone is concerned we're destroying the planet and we'll have to find a new one soon! Would you leave earth for another planet?

I think so much of our fantasizing about other worlds is just an unconscious analogy for exploring our own, which most of us know so little about. All these films in which we colonize other planets are basically viewing them as another Americas, or Australia. The book Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson is an excellent portrayal of space colonization (and terraforming), as mankind attempts to flee from itself and its flaws and start something new. Ultimately, the same old diseases of greed and racism begin to seep in.

I've been lucky to see quite a lot of the world over the past year, and I can quite honestly say I've sometimes felt like I'm on an alien planet. There's so much of our world most of us will never see or understand, to me leaving Earth for another planet would probably, as you say, be something that would happen only in the case of extreme tragedy. We'd be leaving behind a corpse.

Michael: "It's worth noting the dedication of Davo in the tunnel/running scene. The tunnel was a long shaft that led through into an interior pit. The ledge on which Marene 'died' leads directly onto a 200ft odd drop. Davo was really sprinting as fast as he could out of the tunnel, so there was very little margin for error."

NZCA LINES UK Tour Dates with Metronomy

12.4 - Glasgow, UK - O2 Academy
12.5 - London, UK - Alexandra Palace
12.6 - Manchester, UK - Albert Hall

Kim Taylor Bennett loves this landscape and Nzca Lines. She's on Twitter.