Dezeen Music Project: multiple pairs of hands play instruments together in this music video directed by Mathieu Renoult for French producer 20syl.
Shot from above, Ronoult's video features several pairs of hands, which each play different parts of 20syl's track Kodama on a variety of keyboards, synthesisers, sampling pads and other instruments.
When they are not playing their instruments, the hands occupy themselves by making tea, checking their phones, knitting and doodling on a sketch pad.
"We wanted to show how the music is made," Renoult told Dezeen. "Because 20syl is a beat maker we wanted it to play a big part in the video. But we looked for ideas to make it more complex. We were not trying to just do a beat making video, we wanted to have a story."
At first it seems that each pair of hands belongs to a different person off camera, but as the video progresses the hands start to swap instruments in a way that would be impossible if they were still attached to a human.
"We wanted people to wonder if 20syl did the all hands or if it was just a one-shot video," Renoult explained. "We did a few things that suggests it's a one-shot video and some others thats suggest it's not. We wanted people to wonder."
In fact, each hand in the video is one of 20syl's own limbs.
"We shot the entire video in 20syl's parents' garage," Renoult said. "Only the two of us. We used After Effects to make the hands appear at the same time on screen."
Renoult believes that viewers can take something different out of the video each time they watch it.
"There are a lot of ways to watch it, just like there are a lot of ways to listen to a song," he said. "You can either just focus on one instrument or all of the hands. You can understand how the music is made or concentrate more on the feeling we tried to create."
