It’s RGM video premiere time, today we have the new video from Emma Hunter and her new video Gates of Love
Here are a few words about the video, enjoy!👊
Gates of Love is the last song from the album Yolanda by Emma Hunter. This concept album follows the story of Yolanda, a character from the 1950s living in a small town in Mexico.
The video for Gates of Love takes inspiration from the Radiohead video for Daydreaming. Emma Hunter and Matthew Trevor-Roper (director) loved the concept of the opening and closing of doors, a metaphor for ending a part of someone’s life. It also needed to be reflective of the end of the story for Yolanda, so it felt like an apt metaphor to use. Gates of Love, is the song where she cuts all ties with Danny, her terrible, alcoholic, cruel partner. By also incorporating footage from previous videos, (Nightingale directed by Tom Legge and Carrie Southall, Here I Go by Siobhan Cox and Morire and Treacle Well by Matt Trevor-Roper) it helps to retell why she is so out of love with Danny. Although Treacle Well is not part of the Yolanda universe, it shows a chase between Emma and Tom Bruce (drummer and the actor who plays the character of Danny). It’s still a part of the Emma Hunter catalogue of work which adds to the sense of disorientation and feeling overwhelmed. That’s what the song is about and in Gates of Love, Yolanda is overwhelmed with hatred.
Emma and Matthew incorporated elements of Lynch and catholic iconography by using red velvet ribbons and crosses and the line ‘turn all thoughts of you to dust’ is what led to the concept of burial. Burying the parts of her life she wishes to leave behind. Burying the image of Yolanda and Danny in the woods and leaving her old life behind. There is a surprise in the video which takes this phrase to the next level.
The video was filmed in many of oxfords most famous landmarks and shops including The Goldfish Bowl, Truck Stores and Caper book shop as a love letter to Oxford and the Oxford music scene. It was intentionally shot over several seasons and in different kinds of locations like woods, a brutalist car park and at the start, potentially Yolanda and Danny’s house, long left abandoned.
This was to create a surreal, disjointed feel where different visual effects were added to each scene to continue to separate each element. Mirroring images appear where ribbon is dropped on the floor in this video, as it did in Treacle Well. These small replications help to create a sense of looking back over the past 6 years of Emma’s music as well as a way of letting go of the character of Yolanda. Where by the end of the video, she is finally set free.
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