Behind The Scenes: Phendrana - Cathexis (Official Video)

Right from the beginning, it was decided not to do a “playthrough” video; I’m not interested in people watching us playback our instruments. Instead, the primary idea was to convey a story through symbols. “Cathexis” encapsulates the album’s core themes: Introspection and existentialism, so the story was built around those two concepts: An innocent perspective on life and a world of possibilities beyond the Veil, opposed to a reality bereft of inherent meaning.

The crew consisted of a small but dedicated group of women: Fátima (who directed, shot and edited the video), Paula (the actress), Paola (who designed and hand-crafted the costume), and Azul (who helped with the costume maintenance during the shooting and also served as our crew). During post-production, Oscar joined the team to handle colour correction.

 

A key element during the creative process was to deliberately avoid any sort of storyboard or “rough sketch” for both the overall video structure and specific shots; we only had the concept in mind, and from there we improvised during the filming. Most of my music comes from intuition rather than planning, and I wanted to keep that same drive for the video itself.

 

The video was shot in the span of three days at Los Dínamos National Park, Mexico City. Fátima dedicated the first day to capturing all the panoramic, close-ups, and experimental shots, while the other two days were fully dedicated to the actress. Speaking of which, I am extremely impressed and grateful for the devotion Pau showed to the project. We made her do very uncomfortable and rather dangerous stuff, such as walking and crawling barefoot through the woods, the river, bearing the bonfire’s smoke, and the rain... You name it.

The only device used during the filming process was a Canon camera. Everything else was deliberately left for “natural” resources; only natural illumination, steam, and scenography. We tried to make the best of the resources we found in the park, including the bonfire, so as to maintain the natural and primitive feeling conveyed in the music. We only had one try with the bonfire, so we needed to be as efficient as possible with those last takes, especially because by the end it was starting to rain, but in the end everything turned out just fine.