This Is What The World Is For: Making Electricity

MGMT are a dynamic duo hailing from Brooklyn, New York. Previouisly titled "The Management", Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden accidentally sumbled upon something beautiful while experimenting with noise rock and electronics, eventually settling on what Spin Magazine calls "their current brand of shape-shifting psychedelic pop."

MGMT is the compilation of two quarky musical geeks and their intruments (digital and not), expressing their love for drugs, dirty dancing, and the madness of the world. The video for Electric Feel is a perfect example of the ride they take you on with their edgy, psychedelic-electronica.

Because MGMT is an indie band, and I get the feel that they are still in a very experimental stage of their careers, I would classify this video as an experimental abstract. I love it. The song is one of my favorites from the band, and when I saw the video for the first time I just couldn't tear away. The song itself has such a sexy, dance-and-love-life feel to it, and the video promotes just the same. Alot of people would say that the "electric girl", and this video is all about acid, and about sex, but I really don't agree. I think that it definitely has some sexual reference, but mostly I think that this video is simply about showing life as a crazy good time with all the crazy good feelings you get from love, music, fun and dancing. I think that what you see is what you get, and it doesn't make perfect sense and it doesn't show a hidden message, but that's alright because sometimes life is just meant to be fun.

While watching a video on youtube about the making of this video, Andrew comments on the inspiration of the song.

"This song is about umm .. a woman, who comes from the amazon rainforest who has the power to shock people with electricity, that runs through her veins. She could be part eel, or alien or something."

The concept for this video was also created by Andrew. In his own words,

"I want to have a hillbilly jamboree, that mixes a Snoop Dog video with psychedelic cartoons & some animatronic Chuck-E-Cheese s--t."

Genius.

I think that all the people working on this video must have had a wicked time. Watching the 'Making Of' video, the director talks about how the crew consisted of some of his very best-friends from all over the world, and how the project felt celebratory, like creating a "profound silliness", with a reunion of his favorite people. I feel like working on a video with that type of atmosphere would be so much better than any sort of big hollywood production. The pressures are still there, the late nights still have to be put in, but you are surrounded by people you know and people who you get to really know, combining efforts into making something true and funny and wonderful.

My favorite part of the video is when the moon falls from the sky, and it is cut open and moon blood spills out and all over everyone. A giant helium balloon was blown up to create the moon, and digital effects were added in later. A large focus of the production of this video was on green-screening, and another very important part was the appearance of the Rock-afire Explosion.

The RAE was an anamatronic animal band that used to play in Showbiz Pizza Place (orlando, Florida) in the 1980's and 1990's. Rock-afire was sort of like Chuck-E-Cheese, the main difference being that they could actually mimic playing their instruments, and could create real-looking facial expressions due to the use of latex masks as opposed to plastic and foam. The show also used alot of props and lighting effects which heightened the amount of perceived movement on stage. The Rock-afire Show was overtaken by Chuck-E-Cheese in 1991, but a large fan base continues to exist.

The band's brief appearance in this video helps to keep their memory alive, and they were the perfect piece of the Electric Feel puzzle. Original producers from the RAE show were available to assist in the syncing and programming of the band to MGMT's music. This aspect of the video is, to me, really interesting because the band incorporated old forms of entertainment into their video, mixing robots from the 80's with modern day editing and effects.

Most music videos are made to convey a certain message or moral, but this video was created just for kicks and just to create the vision that Andrew saw. And thats totally alright. I don't think that there has to been a deeper meaning for everything in life. When Ben is flying through the sky on a motorcycle, it doesn't really need to symbolize anything other than it looks cool to fly through the sky on a motorcycle. This is a wicked video that I love to watch over and over again, and from a filmmakers point of view it has fantastic art direction and use of technology.