When creating this hand-painted music video for Oakland musician Makeunder, Carine Khalife looked to the works of figurative painter Francis Bacon (+ movie).
Khalife, a French visual artist, was approached by Hamilton Ulmer – who uses the moniker Makeunder – to create a video for his Great Headless Blank track.
Ulmer's only request was that the video involved paint, so Khalife pitched him some ideas and a number of references, including works by figurative painter Francis Bacon.
"I can't say I came up with an idea, really, but more with a sense of how the video should feel like," she told Dezeen. "We agreed on a couple of visuals and also that it could turn into something slightly different."
The song discusses themes of pain, grief, and the need to escape. Much of Khalife's experimentation was based around finding textures, shapes, colours, and movements that exude the emotions without being a direct illustration.
"Getting dressed, washing hands – these actions become challenging when one's own condition seems overwhelming," she said.
"The video shows literally when life pushes you, lift you up and turn you upside down restlessly, the feeling of spinning endlessly without really ever departing."
Using oil paints mixed with bike grease, Khalife painted each frame on a piece of glass placed on top of a light box.
To create movement in the paintings, she would pull and smudge the paint with a large brush and paper towels.
Each frame was captured by a camera fixed above the light box, then linked together in post-production software. All in all, the video took Khalife five months to make.
"When I needed a reference, I would stand in my studio, and move my own body the way I wanted my character to move, and when I understood how it felt, I would paint it," she concluded.