Sundance award-winning filmmaking duo rubberband. – comprised of Jason Sondock and Simon Davis – are the masterminds behind Fred Again..‘s striking new run of music videos. Drawn from the British producer’s ongoing USB series, the films bring three tracks to life: HARDSTYLE 2 featuring KETTAMA and Shady Nasty, scared featuring Young Thug, and Lights Burn Dimmer with Jamie T.

Across the trilogy, we follow the protagonist – Brandon – through a series of cinematic black-and-white vignettes. Each story unfolds in just ten to thirteen seconds of real time, captured at extremely high speed, then what is experienced in the span of a breath is stretched into three and a half minutes on screen. “These ideas and their dogmatic structure came directly from our conversations with Fred and his creative director, LOOSE. Fred’s aesthetic has been very black and white, and we wanted to give ourselves the restriction of 500 fps Slow Motion and single takes on top of that,” the duo tell us.

“This allows something very ‘real’ to have an immediate feeling of otherworldliness without doing too much in the way of trickery.” It’s the realness of the pair’s visual style that brings Fred’s USB series into reality in a way that emulates the intense energy of his live performances: a pulsing dance floor, a heaving crowd and fleeting moments shared with strangers. Below, rubberband talks us through some of their timeless references, from the pictorial realism of Goya to the monochromatic images of Duane Michals.

The photography of Duane Michals
“Duane Michals’ Sequences have had (and continue to have) a profound impact on our work. The idea of somehow only gleaning something profound from a wildly limited set of visual information and repetition was always incredible to me. How do you take a simple thing and expand it just enough to give an audience or viewer context without overtly giving them exposition?”

The work of Francisco Goya
“Goya’s Black Paintings had some influence for sure. After seeing them in person at the Prado, it’s hard not to be struck by how they depict fear and anxiety, focusing on the subject’s face, playing with what a viewer of the work is allowed to see and not see. There’s also the interesting fact that Goya painted these on the walls of his home, never intending for anyone to see them. Something about making art for art’s sake is in there, too.”

I’m Looking For Helen Twelvetrees by David Greenspan
“I’m Looking For Helen Twelvetrees by David Greenspan deals with a young man’s proximity to perceived fame, in this case, an actress called Helen Twelvetrees. However, it’s the choice to place the audience on the stage itself (literally, the audience sits on the stage and the action takes place in front of them with the seating area as backdrop), looking back into the auditorium, instead of the other (traditional) way around that is so interesting and effective in this play. How a completely different aesthetic perspective completely changes something’s impact. Given how intensely we were asked to consider where the camera was in relationship to the story for these films, this play was very top of mind.”