For more than a year, Florence + the Machine have been releasing a series of stunning, personal narrative music videos in connection with their latest album, How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful. While she was still writing the album, Florence Welch, the band’s emphatic lead singer, started sculpting The Odyssey with her longtime collaborator, nine-time Staff Picked filmmaker Vincent Haycock.
Together, they cultivated an astonishing long-form music video. And by releasing it in chapters throughout the album cycle — meaning, the timeframe in which an album is promoted — they established and maintained both a visual style and tone for the record.
The result is a sprawling and emotional project with striking cinematography from Steve Annis, brilliantly surprising choreography, and a powerful, fearless performance from Florence. Recently, they released The Odyssey as a single film — one that was promptly Staff Picked.
Florence and Vince
But exactly what does it take to bring the moving parts together, collaborate at all stages of the creative process, and bring a visual album to life? ‘I’ve always wanted to make a long-form video, or an entire album of videos for the same artist,’ Vince explains. ‘To me it’s always made the most sense. You used to see this more often back in the day. Guys like Anton Corbijn worked with Joy Division to complete a singular look for a album. Or Glazer and Radiohead, Gondry and Björk. It’s the best way to create a complete vision for an artist’s album, a cohesive connection between audio and visual.’ Which is exactly what they achieve.
In the age of streaming singles and Tidal exclusives, the album is still really important as a complete piece, and a long-form music video is uniquely built to highlight that. Most album cycles, if the artist is lucky, will feature a few singles with an accompanying music video. Sometimes the videos are visually or tonally connected, but usually they tend to exist separate from one another.
The Odyssey‘s structure challenges that idea and solidifies the relationship between the videos and the album. ‘I think we were able to create a deeper connection between Florence’s audience and her music than you could do with a single video or a disjointed series of videos. The story transcends the individual singles and takes on a life of its own, creating a story for the album that people can revisit and experience as a cohesive project.’
Choreographer Ryan Heffington
But one challenge of feature-length music videos is that they often struggle to fully align with the album, serving as a true visual extension. Sometimes it’s because the individual videos are made by a group of directors with different visual interpretations of the music, and other times it’s because the videos are released all at once rather than running parallel with the release of the singles.
But The Odyssey‘s chapters fit with the way most albums are promoted and digested. The videos can stand on their own as individual achievements – which helped to promote the singles during the initial roll out – but they also fit seamlessly into the feature-length film. It mirrors the way singles tend to operate, as they often find their place back within the track list as time passes after the release.
This cohesion might be one reason why Florence’s label was willing to greenlight an idea of this scale. Because getting an ambitious project like this approved isn’t easy. As Vince puts it, ‘We decided to do this project before the label was involved so we could align our ideas and make sure we could get everyone on board.’
Trust means getting in the water together with camera gear
And by everyone, Vince means everyone. ‘Having a coherent team is the best way to make anything, so we always tried to bring as many of the same cast and crew together. Steve Annis (DP) and Natasha Newman-Thomas (stylist) did every video, Ryan Heffington and Holly Blakey shared the choreography responsibilities, and some recurring collaborators came and went, like the talented Ari Robbins and Brian Freesh (Steadicam) would come on when schedules would align.
We would pick up the rest of the crew in each country we shot.’ In terms of collaboration, Steve elaborates, ‘Oh man… we had some insane crews in Mexico. God bless Dave Edsell, the focus puller, for keeping it all together. God bless Ari Robbins for being Ari Robbins, and Ahmet, my U.K. focus puller, and Robbie Hart who did the last few U.S. vids. All these guys I’ve known for ages, and there is 100% trust, and love, and respect.’
That mutual trust and respect served as a foundation for these projects, one that allowed Vince to steer the story throughout the extended production. ‘We had a beginning and end, but the middle wasn’t determined until we got started and the singles were selected,’ Vince writes. ‘We had to stay loose to accommodate which single would be next. But we planned out as much as we could, which made it take longer than a feature. We shot over a year and half, coordinating everything around Florence’s tour and release of her album.’
Steve, Vince, Flo, and the rest of the gang
This trust seemed to come pretty naturally to Steve, as someone who works with Vince often. ‘Everyone knew each other, but I feel [like] the only person in the room who knew what he wanted was Vince. And I don’t think he really knew what he wanted a lot of time until the final moments before filming began.
St. Jude was planned and filmed between noon and 6:30 p.m., which is madness. There was a constant fizzing of creativity on each set and each job, which was a good thing. Shots and scenes were either choreographed and staged to perfection or made up on the spot. I never realized Vince intended to make this into one long film. I instinctively made sure each video had a similar look and style by utilizing similar lighting techniques and film stocks and lenses.’
And of course, as Steve explains, that trust works both ways: ‘Often he lets me just film things. Often he asks for something very specific. I’ve known Vince since the Calvin Harris Bounce days, so I know exactly the look and style he wants. I know he likes to shoot hard and fast, and shoot 360 … and I’m good at getting him this and making sure it looks good. It’s often a very, very difficult way of shooting, but if I can come out of this creative cave in one piece, then I can hopefully do most anything!’
An immensely talented, trusting, and collaborative crew doesn’t just rally around a project of this magnitude by accident. It grows out of an artist/director relationship with the same trust and creative energy. Vince and Florence are friends and have worked together for years, and from that came an extremely personal project. ‘It was influenced by Florence’s descriptions of how she was feeling when she wrote the music,’ Vince shares. ‘We always fictionalized the truth a bit so that it would all fit into the themes and visuals we created.
Everything, down to the locations and wardrobe, always came from a very personal reference to Florence and my ideas or feelings about a song or story we shared. We always started with real stories or feelings Florence had about a song or scene, and then turned that into our visual language — whether it be choreography, lighting, dialogue, etc.’
The makings of visual album mastery
Unfortunately, we can’t get our hopes up for The Odyssey 2: Lost In New York, or another long-form music video from Vince in the near future. While it’s safe to assume more musicians might try to take their turn at the visual album, finding the connection between a group of artists like Florence, Vince, Steve, and the rest of their crew is a lot less likely.
‘I would love to do it again but I have very little hopes that it would be possible,’ Vince offers. ‘So much has to happen to make it a reality. The stars have to align so perfectly, and so much trust has to be given over … in an economy where money comes first and creative second, it really takes someone who is passionate and experienced to make something like this happen. I’ll forever be grateful to Florence for this because I feel like it was a once in a lifetime chance. But that doesn’t mean I won’t try.’