Iconoclast director Emily Kai Bock treats viewers to private moments with Lorde with the music video for her latest single “Yellow Flicker Beat” written for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part One soundtrack. From the striking image of an 80s-styled Lorde bathed in the cherry hues of a neon motel sign to the dark party scene evoking a modern Gatsby – Emily Kai Bock creates a world of arresting vignettes.  From scene to scene, Lorde’s dancing moves from jolts of frantic motion to moments of tense stillness, yet our eyes stay magnetized by her composed visage.

“Ella [Lorde] is a true collaborator.” Emily says, “She had sent me a reference video of Mae West being interviewed by Dick Cavett. In the clip, Dick Cavett walks across a massive airplane hanger to this tiny lit set, where Mae West is reclining in this chair – it’s a really surreal interview setting.”

“I wrote her a treatment with a bunch of these kind of set ideas, of things that could live within a dark void of a large vacant space, under a singular light – a motel room, a confessional, a chandelier, a streetlamp, and so on – and she loved it.  I was really excited about the idea of using black as a way to transition between the worlds, losing the context of what is exterior and what is interior.”

Due to Lorde’s busy schedule, the exteriors were shot in north New Jersey, and the interiors in the Park Avenue Armory during Fashion Week. The crew managed to squeeze just one day in between the Marc Jacobs and Tommy Hilfiger shows – with only 24 hours to build, shoot, and take down the sets. 

“Yellow Flicker Beat” was shot while Lorde was on tour, with her playing shows in Canada between shoot dates. Emily says, “We would wrap set and she would get on her tour bus to drive overnight to a new city and play a show. She didn’t seem tired though. There was one scene where she had to fall off a four-foot platform onto these mats repeatedly, and she was really excited about it. I think even complained that the platform wasn’t higher.”