Placed: Between Light & Melancholy

Ambiguous Surrealism in Designer and Director Fernando Lazzari’ Collaboration with Reid Willis

You may be forgiven if you’re not sure exactly how to feel after watching Reid Willis’ latest video for his track, Placed, as that is exactly what you’re supposed to think!

‘There is a really ambiguous quality in his music,’ designer and director Fernando Lazzari told us about Reid Willis. ‘It oscillates between being quite light and quite melancholic at the very same time. I wanted to reflect that in the video.’

After discovering Reid Willis’ music on Vimeo and then using it in his reel, Fernando was asked to make this video, after in-turn being discovered by Reid. We ventured further into this dream world of Juxtapositions.

The Plus: How would you describe the video and what reactions have you gotten?
Fernando Lazzari: I would say its Surreal. I get weird quite a lot, but I’m not sure if that’s a great word! I definitely wanted to create something quite dreamlike and surreal. And definitely ambiguous in terms of how happy or how dark it was. I’m pretty open to interpretation.

TP: Is the video a mix of CGI and shots from camera?
FL: All the backgrounds were shot on a DSLR in Isle of White here in the UK. And then I started to gather all of the CGI on top of it.

TP: How long did it take?
FL: It took a while, several months. It was a side project and there were periods I wasn’t doing anything, there were periods I was trying some stuff but I wasn’t happy with it. It was a side project and nothing commercial, without any deadlines, so I took my time.

TP: What was the most challenging part of the process?
FL: I do have some technical limitations. If I had a team on my side, I probably would have created more complex creatures or organisms. There is a bit of a technical challenge overall. But I think that the most important challenge came when really coming together with an edit I was happy with; a visual concept for each shot, like coming up with the idea for each single shot until I was happy with it, given my technical limitations.