Grappling with the Beast

Filmmaker Ben Steiger Levine says that conceiving an idea for a music video is a harrowing experience.

"In my case, it's a very painful process," the Montreal-based director says with a quiet laugh. "I need to get into a place of frustration. Then, when I'm there, something finally comes of it."

That was apparently what happened when he was conceptualizing images for the song Mr. Hurricane by Montreal band Beast. The frustration of what he calls "a crazy labour of love" appears to have paid off, as the video has earned Levine his first Grammy Award nomination. This coming Sunday, Levine's work will be up against videos for Depeche Mode (Wrong), Coldplay (Life in Technicolour II) and the Black Eyed Peas (Boom Boom Pow).

Levine first heard about the nomination while he was in New York shooting a commercial. "Someone called to tell me, and I thought they were joking," he said. "I thought it must have been a misprint. It was surreal. Then I went to the [Grammy] website and saw the list of nominees, and there we were. I was much more excited about it two days later after I had time to let it sink in."

Beast, which specializes in hip-hop-inflected rock, is vocalist Betty Bonifassi and producer Jean-Phi Goncalves. Mr. Hurricane appears on the duo's self-titled 2008 debut album. Bonifassi and Goncalves approached Levine and his producer, Sach Baylin-Stern, after having seen some of their earlier work – in particular, You Are Never Alone, a video they did for quirky Montreal rapper Socalled, and Fancy Footwork, a clip for electro-pop revivalists Chromeo.

"Inspiration is such a mysterious thing," says the 30-year-old Levine of how he conceives videos. "I basically put the track on repeat and listen to it over and over again — in some cases, hundreds of times. I'm guesstimating, but I figure I listened to Mr. Hurricane about 100 times."

Levine said his main point of inspiration came when he realized that there was a recurring motif in the band's branding, in particular on its album cover art and MySpace page. "There are bees all over it. I have no clue why, but there they are," says Levine. He thought it might be intriguing if "they were to perform in a beehive. I went back to them, and they said, 'Cool, great. Let's go with it!' They liked the energy of it."

Levine says he likes to combine two things in his video work: some kind of narrative thread and a technical challenge. "Our cinematographer, Christophe Collett, had shot something in this really great house in Quebec, near the Ontario border. We rented it for a day and shot there. I liked the idea of the band performing the song in the house and then being overwhelmed by a swarm of bees."

Technically, that meant using CGI. "There are no real bees in the video – not one. We designed one bee, animated it, and then you make a cloud of them from that one. One swarm seems to become human." Levine worked on the effects in post-production with animator Josh Sherrett; Gregory Adam Kaufman chipped in additional 3-D imaging.

One could go looking for subtexts, but Levine says his main objective was to make a video that "was very visually appealing."

"The house has got a great look to it – it almost becomes another character in the video," he says. "Many videos look amazing but get boring after 30 seconds. I wanted to keep this interesting. I used a slower camera. I find if you take your time revealing things, people are often more engaged than they would otherwise be."

Levine describes his influences as very broad. He got a BA in communication studies at Concordia University and then did a year-long film program at Institut national de l'image et du son (INIS) in Montreal. "I'm very into old film noir and films by Hitchcock," Levine said. "I liked the idea that we don't reveal the bee man right away. We take our time to reveal it, just as things are revealed over time in a Hitchcock film." Levine says the fluid camera movements were also loosely inspired by old films. "I thought of old Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movies and their dance sequences. The video has an old-timey feel."

Despite his classic influences, Levine says "part of what's cool about working in video is that the form invites a lot of experimentation. In some respects, it's like installation art. You can do things — challenge or push technical limits or narrative ideas — that you would have a harder time doing in film or TV."

Levine will be flying to L.A. for the Grammy Awards ceremony this Sunday. "I really don't expect to win, but hey, if I get the chance to be sitting two seats away from Madonna or Beyoncé, that'd be totally fun. It'll be a once-in-a-lifetime experience."

Whether or not he wins, the mere nomination has buoyed his career. "I'm getting a lot of calls from production houses in the U.S. and Europe," Levine reports. "That's a nice thing. I won't have to work in a restaurant again."

The Grammy Awards will be handed out Jan. 31.

Matthew Hays is a writer based in Montreal.