Synopsis

A succession of eerie human-machine hybrids moves through a dark, artificial world built around the remix's pounding club pulse. Bodies are fitted with volume knobs, equalizer lights, audio cables and other recording equipment, while rapid-fire cuts introduce increasingly unsettling transformations. The imagery shifts between grotesque, comic and surreal, culminating in a deliberately shocking image involving a woman and a singing mouth. Rather than presenting the band, the video turns "Signs" into a disturbing audiovisual collage about bodies, technology and music.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was made for Armand Van Helden's remix of "Signs," released as the lead single from Bloc Party's *Intimacy Remixed* in 2009.

• The production was made on a budget of approximately $2,000, with much of the crew consisting of film-school friends working for free.

• The original brief called for something "crazy and attention grabbing" with a club or rave setting. The label reportedly gave the production unusually broad freedom to push the concept as far as possible.

• The hybrid figures were created through a combination of practical effects and post-production. The team spent much of the preparation deciding which machine elements could be built physically and which would be added digitally.

• The entire production was completed in roughly two and a half weeks: four days of preparation, one shooting day, seven days of editing and four days of visual-effects work.

• Ghost Town Media handled the animation and visual effects. The production used Final Cut, After Effects and Mocha.

• The most notorious image was not part of the initial concept. After the label asked for something more extreme, the idea of replacing female genitalia with a singing mouth was proposed and approved.

• Contemporary coverage compared the video's body horror and mechanical anatomy to the work associated with Chris Cunningham and Aphex Twin, particularly "Come to Daddy."

• The video became an important early calling card for its young filmmaker and was later singled out as one of the projects he was especially proud of. Its deliberately cheap, fast-made production contrasted sharply with its polished and unsettling final appearance.