How Azealia Banks Made the Groundbreaking Video for “Wallace”

Azealia Banks broke out in 2011 on the strength of a music video. When she rapped in a Minnie Mouse T-shirt against a simple brick wall in "212," we fell in love; When she rapped, "hey, I can be the answer," we believed her. Four years later, Banks has dropped another memorable music video for the track "Wallace," from her 2014 album Broke With Expensive Taste. Where "212" reveled in its simplicity, "Wallace" is a breakthrough of complex artistic and technological interaction.

Directed by Nick Ace and Rob Soucy using technology from Google's open source web-based creative workshop, Chrome Experiments, "Wallace" is an interactive video that lets you control Banks's movements by moving your face in front of your computer's camera. The video uses a face-tracking app and the camera on the viewer's computer to create a viewing experience that is immersive and interactive and still browser-based. In the second half of the video, the viewer appears on-screen, blending into the background and unexpectedly joining Banks in her world.

In time for the start of SXSW Interactive this past weekend, the video dropped last Wednesday, prompting social media to blow up with the hashtag #WallaceVideo (a refreshingly music-related reason for Banks to be a trending topic)

The concept for "Wallace" was born when Ace was turned on to the face-tracking app on Chrome Experiments by experience designer Brett Renfer, a colleague at Collins brand consultancy. The first time he saw the technology in use, Ace says it allowed the user to become a moving, virtual Queen Elizabeth. "I was obsessed," he recalls. "Later that week I had asked Brett if it was possible to use my head as a channel changer; he said 'yes.'"

While not quite the Queen of England, Banks reached out to Ace and Soucy, having seen the video the pair had directed for rapper Kevin Hussein. She tapped the duo to helm the clip for another track from Broke with Expensive Taste, "Heavy Metal and Reflective," before all the stars aligned for "Wallace."

"I met with Nick one morning, and he came in all hot on this idea he had earlier that day," says Soucy. "To be perfectly honest, my first thought was that he was fucking insane. When you're experimenting with a new concept, there's a lot of chance involved."

The team started experimenting, "maniacally staring at each other, while doing the beat [of the song] with our mouths and the snare hits with our eyeballs," according to Ace.

"We wanted the viewer to not only affect the artist, but bring themselves into her world," says Soucy. "We needed it to feel like it was just you and her alone in a room together."

The background elements, the directors say, were inspired by early James Bond title sequences, with the monochromatic flashes adding to the feeling of unpredictability. Knowing that Banks's would be an ideal palette and performer for the motion-detecting app, the directors decided to use the musician's eyes and mouth as the video's visual focal points, resulting in an unusually intimate experience for the audience.

"We knew that the only way this concept would work was with a great personality and a great song," says Ace.

"She is such an expressive person. The way her body language communicates is naturally hypnotizing," Soucy explains. "You can't direct or predict that going into a shoot—she brought it."

Filming took place in one day on green screen at Studio 123 in New York's Chinatown. Banks had to nail over 30 equally perfect takes to get every angle needed for post-production and optimize the app's built-in slit scan technology.

If Banks has earned a reputation for being difficult, it's not how she was on set or in pre-production. "She's jam-packed full of exciting ideas and has the energy to make them all happen," Soucy says of Banks. "She gets shit done and thats what Nick and I are all about. Usually things do not move that fast, but when the three of us work together, we have a very special dynamic that is exceptionally rare. We believe in her and she trusts us to do our thing."

"She is uninterested in doing what the rest of her contemporaries are doing," adds Ace. "She is an exceptional collaborator and despite what you may have heard, painless to work with."

"Azealia is cool, bottom line," adds Soucy.

With "Wallace," she has a pretty cool video too.

Michelle Lhooq is THUMP's Features Editor. Follow her on Twitter.

Zel McCarthy is THUMP's Editor-in-Chief. Follow him on Twitter.