Golden Gates is a one shot, slow motion music video for Australian band, Sundown Jury. It shows the surreal moments of a young girl’s dream, and as she dances her way along the path laid out before her, the surrounding world changes, guiding us through an abstract story that explores curiosity, vulnerability, and the courage to overcome fear.

Director’s Statement

I originally heard this track while I was on a different shoot with Samantha Todd (the dancer) and knew straight away it would be pretty amazing to shoot it as a slow motion dance with her. We shot the music video at 120 frames per second, which meant each attempt was about 50 seconds in real life. It took a lot of trial and error to figure out how to time the movements of the dance so that it would sync with the track. Before even getting to the creative part of the dance, I converted all of the sections of the song into a timeline that was 4.8 times faster than the real song – that gave us the structure to base the dance around. Then Samantha and I spent a lot of hours working on ways to translate the emotion of each part of the song through dance – but in a way that would make sense in slow motion. We also had to consider the choreography of the camera, lighting, confetti, and the fire VFX – every action in the clip occurs at a very precise moment. Everyone in the crew brought some incredible ideas to the table, and once we combined the technical with the creative, we were able to make everything work together beautifully.