Garth Jennings is better known to most folks as one half (along with Nick Goldsmith) of the music video and commercial directing duo, Hammer & Tongs. The team has made celebrated ads and music videos for years, including works for Blur, R.E.M., Fatboy Slim and Radiohead. The team has also wet their feet with feature films with Jennings directing and Goldsmith producing. Their first venture was the ill-advised adaptation of “Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy” in 2005 and it was followed a couple of years later with low key charmer, “Son Of Rambow.”
Since then, the team has put their head down and continued their work on music videos and ads, but Jennings took a time out to speak with Pitchfork about Hammer & Tongs’ videos for Vampire Weekend and some film projects they hope to get off the ground.
Since Goldsmith is friends with XL honcho Richard Russell, the videos for “A-Punk” and the latest, “Cousins” were done as freebies simply because the duo loved the band. Since the videos were decidedly no-fi, no budget efforts, it means the productions had to be simple, but it also afforded them the opportunity to shoot, edit and show the band a rough cut all in the same day:
Pitchfork: How did you first hear about Vampire Weekend? Garth Jennings: My producer Nick [Goldsmith] is good friends with Richard Russell, who runs their label, XL Recordings. I remember him playing me Vampire Weekend early on and I loved it. From that point on I’ve been trying to do as much as I can with them. There’s no point in doing a video with a band you don’t like. It’s too difficult. In the early days when we were just starting, we’d work with anybody because we just loved making stuff. But we soon realized the good stuff came when you really love the artist. The Vampire Weekend videos have been freebies, too, so you can only do something like that if you really want to. Pitchfork: So your Vampire Weekend videos were like favors? GJ: Yeah, we didn’t pay ourselves. There was money to make them but not very much. They were both on video with just ourselves shooting with no lights. You can’t try to make something look too grand when you can’t really live up to it. The art department on “Cousins” is some colored sticky tape and a bed sheet painted with some circles– that was the budget. We really loved the song instantly and had an affordable concept that, in terms of post-production, would be done by the time we finished the last shot. Then we could watch it on set and the band could decide whether they liked it or not.
But, feature films are still on Jennings mind, and he’s pretty much done two scripts which he hopes to get off the ground. First up is an animated film, and Jennings says the script for that film is completely done, while the other is a “live action epic” which is still being worked on. Both Jennings describes as “gigantic labors of love,” but as always the search for someone to back the films is an ongoing struggle.It’s pretty heartening to hear of a directing duo, doing freebies when they don’t really need to be, especially to a band like Vampire Weekend, simply because they feel passionate about it. Here’s hoping Jennings and Goldsmith get a chance to tackle those scripts sometime soon.Check out the lively and fun Vampire Weekend videos below: