Go Outside

  

Boing Boing is thrilled to feature the premier of Cults' music video for "Go Outside", directed by Isaiah Seret. Cults is the Manhattan duo of Brian Oblivion and Madeline Follin who first gained notoriety last year on the strength of music they posted to their bandcamp page. The group's eponymous debut LP was just released on In The Name Of/Columbia Records. We think it was worth the wait.

Director's Statement

To tell the story of Cults' hauntingly beautiful track, "Go Outside", I was inspired to bring the band inside the world of Jim Jones' famous religious cult, Peoples Temple, and the eventual tragedy in
Jonestown. Fortunately, when exploring the feasibility of this video I became acquainted with Fielding M. McGehee III, an expert on Peoples Temple history and the primary researcher for the Jonestown Archive. It is thanks to him and his encouragement that I was able to take on this project and through his support gained access to over two and half hours of home videos showing Peoples Temple in Jonestown. For this music video we didn't want to put a spin on the footage or the peoples lives—instead we wanted to re-tell and humanize their story. In order to achieve this we used a combination of stock footage, visual effects and other tricks to embed the band into the historical footage. This was achieved through my collaboration with my visual effects supervisor Bill Gillman and my cinematographer Matthew Lloyd. Lastly, I am moved to say when we completed the video we were able to preview it for some of the survivors of the Jonestown Massacre, who expressed their appreciation of our focus on the lives of the People's Temple members as opposed to exploiting the graphic images of the final tragedy.

In History and Memory,
Isaiah

CREDITS

Director ISAIAH SERET

Executive Producer CANDICE OUAKNINE

Producer JETT STEIGER

Cinematographer MATTHEW LLOYD

Editor LUKE LYNCH

Production Designer MEGAN FENTON

Stylist DIANA CONTRERAS & MINDY LE BROCK

Hair & Makeup Artist ERIN NICHOLS

VFX Supervisor BILL GILMAN

VFX Artist BENJAMIN KUTSKO

1st A.D. SHADIE ELNASHAI

Production Company PRETTYBIRD

Video Rep DOOMSDAY

Footage Courtesy of

The Jonestown Institute

NBC Universal

Don Como

David Gottlieb & Jim Ruxin

California Historical Society

More at Boing Boing

Jonestown, 30 years later: 1, 2, 3

Jonestown Death Tape