‘Fade Into You’ American Football

David Helman directs ‘Fade Into You’ for American Football, featuring Miya Folick.

A mosaic of American life inspired by the words of Mazzy Star.

Filmed in Los Angeles, CA.

Words from David below.

You call it “a mosaic of American life”. What was your method for discovering and constructing scenes?

DH: Each of these scenes were built around people and places that I’ve kept snapshots of somewhere in my head over the years from traveling across the country. So when I began writing the idea for this video, I put all these locations and characters down on the page and started from the beginning. Following the narrative scene-by-scene and character-by-character linearly until it felt cohesive and complete.

Each of these scenes were built around people and places that I’ve kept snapshots of somewhere in my head over the years from traveling across the country.

Can you tell us about the singular use of the zoom lens?

DH: My cinematographer Hayden Mason and I felt that the scale of the video had to strike a balance that was both sweeping and intimate simultaneously.

‘Fade Into You’ American Football

With each new scene we wanted the first few seconds to serve as an introduction to a new time and place and allow the audience the time to absorb where we’ve transported them to. And as the frame begins to close in, the scene becomes less about the environment and more about the protagonist of that moment in time.

The video had to strike a balance that was both sweeping and intimate simultaneously.

You break the form of the video in a few of the closing shots, returning to them empty. Do you have any comments on that?

DH: The empty frames at the conclusion felt like a necessary reprise to show the passage of time and how each of our protagonists had moved on. Reflecting on the fact that each prior scene was a unique combination of people in a specific space that cannot be recreated.

Is there any American cinema, or photography, that particularly shaped your approach?

DH: ‘Slacker’ by Richard Linklater was obviously a massive inspiration for the narrative structure. And in terms of photography – Justine Kurland, Malerie Marder, and Stephen Shore were all huge influences on our approach to deciding where to put the camera.