Cults - Go Outside

Back in February, a very high quality video for indie-pop band Cults’s debut single, “Go Outside,” premiered on MTV.com. But apparently, the fun, romantic clip starring Dave Franco—the younger brother of James, and Emma Roberts, the niece of Julia—wasn’t enough. To generate some more buzz around the single and the band’s self-titled debut album, which hit stores last month, the New York City-based duo teamed up with talented film director Isaiah Seret. The new video he created is very different from the first; this time, the bandmates themselves—Brian Oblivion and Medeline Follin—make appearances and the song takes on a much different meaning. Instead of portraying a classy night in the city filled with nightclubs, kissing scenes and a 1960s red convertible, the brand new visual interpretation of “Go Outside” takes on the band’s name in a literal sense by placing Oblivion and Follin in the middle of the monstrous Jim Jones’ cult, Peoples Temple, during the 1970s. Watch the controversial video above, and read the director’s statement below:

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 retell 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

Source: @CultsCultsCults