Zebrafish Media

Birdeatsbaby
Seraphim

The song really paints a picture of a man on the brink of suicide and a guardian narrator (the Seraphim in the title) who is struggling to support him. The duo had to show the intensity that a mindset like that involves, and the natural route there was, literally displaying the self-made internal horror that thoughts like that create. Surrounded by monsters who represent hell from Dante’s Divine Comedy, sat next to an angel who is physically close yet emotionally distant, and facing off with a child version of himself who just wants him to be happy.

With the duo’s emphasis on doing as much as possible through practical and in-camera effects, this was unsurprisingly a large project. For example, the set build alone was a big job and required getting a full size tree inside a warehouse and standing on its own. The wings created their own challenge too – a seraphim in the Bible has six wings and, with two tattooed on the main actress, a set of four fully functioning, completely life size with a span of about twelve feet, styled, decorated, and (crucially) wearable wings had to be handmade to complete the look. Speaking of which, the make-up department had to apply intensive prosthetics to create eleven demonic monsters while keeping two much less monstrous actors camera ready, not to mention the unique costumes each monster and character wore. The end result of all of this practical work is a much more realistic scene, because every element of it IS real.