Synopsis
Walk Off the Earth perform "Red Hands" while moving through a long industrial hallway toward the camera. Instruments, props, confetti, and pieces of a drum kit appear and disappear around them as the imagery jumps between forward motion, rewinds, and slow motion. Although the performance seems heavily edited, the video is built from one continuous take. The band moves through the song in a deliberately scrambled order, creating a playful visual puzzle in which time, distance, and musical performance seem to run in several directions at once.
Factoids & Trivia
- The video was filmed as one continuous take, with a Steadicam operator walking backward while the band performed and moved forward through the location.
- The song was rearranged before filming. The band had to learn verses, choruses, outro sections, half-measure counts, and slow-motion passages in an order different from the finished soundtrack.
- The completed version uses speed changes, reversals, and reordered sections rather than conventional cuts to create its disorienting effect.
- The shoot was completed in ten full takes, with the final take used for the released video.
- An unedited version was released shortly afterward. It reveals the original performance order and shows how much choreography and musical coordination were required to make the finished version possible.
- The production concept was built around the relationship between physical movement and time. The hallway gives the performers a measurable path while the editing appears to scrub backward and forward along that path.
- The drum-kit sequence was singled out during the production discussion as one of the most difficult and rewarding visual moments because its assembly is also performed out of order.
- "Red Hands" premiered in November 2012, shortly after Walk Off the Earth's viral one-guitar cover of Gotye's "Somebody That I Used to Know" had brought the group major international attention.
- The song became one of the band's notable original hits, reaching No. 9 on the Canadian Hot 100 and topping Billboard's Adult Alternative Songs chart in the United States.