Synopsis
Sickboy perform against a stark white backdrop while their images are repeatedly copied, distorted, and rearranged into a jittery collage. The video's central visual device is a photocopied face pressed against a scanner, its mouth and features warped into rough lip-sync shapes. Band portraits, performance fragments, and black-and-white paper textures multiply across the frame, creating the sensation of a homemade flyer coming alive. The result is an abrasive, handmade visual translation of the song's themes of communication, repetition, and silence.
Factoids & Trivia
- "Silence in Conversation" was the second music video made for Dublin band Sickboy.
- Two of the band's members, Colm and Brian Giles, are identical twins. Their resemblance inspired the video's focus on duplication, copying, and carbon-copy imagery.
- The distorted singing face was created by moving Colm's face across a photocopier as the scanning light passed over it. Hundreds of photocopies were made to provide the mouth and facial positions required for lip-sync.
- The production combined live-action performance footage with photocopied frames, photographed paper elements, and digital compositing. The band was filmed against a white screen before the images were processed into the final collage.
- The video was nominated for Best Production/Special Effects at the inaugural IMTV Video Music Awards in Dublin in 2009.
- It was also presented in animated music-video festival programming, including Supertoon in 2011.