AVICII LE7ELS - Behind the Video

The Avicii’s LE7ELS music video has been viewed over half a billion times and nominated for multiple MTV awards. It’s one of the most referenced EDM videos of all time. This is the story of how it got made from director: Petros Papahadjopoulos.

In 2011 Universal Music Group approached me to create a music video for a little known Swedish DJ called Avicii.  Avicii had been gaining recognition at festivals in the UK and Sweden. Universal wanted to break him to a global audience with a music video capturing the imaginations of Millennials and Gen Z. I had never heard of him at that time. 

In December, Avicii and I got on the phone and discussed the symbolism of his name and the LE7ELS album cover art. I learned the album title, ‘Levels’ refers to the various levels of Buddhist hell. Avici is the name for the lowest level of hell, where those who have committed the worst sins have an opportunity for rebirth.  We also discussed the cover art of an ominous looking elevator in an office building. That was about it, there was no other particular direction. 

I slept on these ideas and woke up the next day to listen to the track. As I was listening I felt the setting for the video should match the cover art. I loved the idea of an office building with an elevator that went to hell. It made me think of Haruki Murakami who had come out with a book in 2009 called IQ84. In it, a woman enters an entirely different dimension but doesn’t realize it. It all takes place in a very mundane setting of a freeway underpass. An elevator seemed like a great unexpected entrance to another dimension. 

I combined the elevator with buddhist hell — Why couldn’t we be in a level of hell right now and not even realize it? Especially in an office building doing a 9-5 grind — day in and day out. 

Next, I needed a character to drive the action. As I listened to the track, I couldn’t help but feel the energy of wanting to dance. The first thing that popped in my head was the image of a regular office dude. He’s greyed out by years of pointless clock punching — the last guy you’d expect to indulge in a spark of free expression, yet there he was, dancing uncontrollably. Why was he dancing in hell? I didn’t really have an answer to that…

Then the Etta James chorus hits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something%27s_Got_a_Hold_on_Me

And that’s where the whole thing gets turned on its head. Avicii smashes this gospel hook into the middle of an infectious dance track — Literally stops the momentum. But it works. It’s a spiritual moment in the middle of an EDM track.  In parallel, my mind took the schlumpy office character and smashes him into a gospel scene. 

Gospel music is about transcendence. What ever troubles you have, it’s there to help lift you above and beyond it. In my imagination, the office worker breaks into song, while he’s pushing a heavy rock up a mountain : like Sysiphus (Love Greek Mythology) but with a more hopeful tone. Yeah, he’s stuck in purgatory but he’s singing along to Etta at the top of a mountian with rainbows all around. 

It was all starting to make sense, so it was time to sit down and start writing to see where it would go. This is the treatment I wrote. It was one of those rare occasions where the whole thing just flowed and I didn’t have to think much about it:

INTRODUCTION

A man trapped in "Avici" suddenly begins to break loose from his Karma and is transported to another dimension. Meanwhile, the world around him collapses in a frightful ending to his reality.

CONCEPT

This video captures the potential that we are living already in Avici, and that maybe we at times are aware of this and the existence of other levels. This video will feel, dark, a twisted reality, beautiful with a thread of comedy and great dance as well.

A man works in an office job. It's an infinite loop of reality. Day in and day out. The reality looks just like our own, but shot through a gritty and unsaturated lens. Our main guy begins to dance uncontrollably. It’s funny at first and then, people in the office begin to get scared by him when he can’t seem to stop. Finally our man is restrained and put in a cell. He bites an officer trying to hold him down. Soon, his dancing spreads like a plague. The officer begins dancing and bites someone else. The dancing spreads as incontrollable convulsions happening in people. We watch as the man’s reality implodes, he’s experiencing awareness of other levels and his entire reality all around him transforms to something new.

THE TONE

This film will be both cinematic and conceptual with a lot of dark humor. It won’t feel like a typical music video — choreography will be executed with an altogether different tone. It will be used as a story telling device rather than something cool to look at. It needs to ride a line between reality and a dark joke without going too far either way. There will be symbolism throughout, that ties into the sense that our reality is part of a larger system of levels.

THE STORY

An unassuming looking office clerk works at his dreary 9-7 job. He’s balding and sallowed. He's an everyman. As he reaches for his pen he begins to write uncontrollably, "LE7ELS" as his arm shakes. The shaking spreads throughout his body until he’s dancing. He’s up on his desk busting out a litany of disparate dancing styles.

At first people are amused that someone’s actually dancing at work. It's funny and fun. We all want to do it. After some time it’s not funny anymore and everyone wants him to stop. But he can’t stop, he’s experiencing a bridge to the next dimension and all he can do is dance. He looks confused and feverish about what's going on. Another clerk tries to grab his hand but he just keeps dancing, knocking him over. The scene escalates until security shows up and tries to talk him down. He won’t obey, so they taze him.

CUT TO

He wakes up in an ambulance tied to a gurney and starts dancing again. They struggle to get him into a cell and give him a shot in

the arm.

CUT TO

While under the influence of the drug he relaxes and sees the next level. He’s like Sisyphus pushing a heavy stone up a mountain in a surreal sequence.

CUT TO

He wakes up in a cell with some doctors and a policeman watching. He begins to dance again. They are drawn in closer watching his moves which are actually quite good. When they get close enough, he lunges forward and bites the officer.

The doctors pull back to inspect the wound on the officer. Then suddenly he begins to dance. Now the clerk and the officer dance mirroring each other’s choreography. The dance is wild and similar to the dance style called "Crumping". The doctors keep their distance from the officer, but he keeps sauntering towards them. They begin to run and he bites a doctor.

The doctor drops to the ground and begins convulsing. Then he’s up and dancing.

CUT TO

People are running with terror out of the building like it’s a bomb threat. After them follow more people afflicted with the dance. People run past the camera as the shot pulls back for a master shot. Above the building in the sky like a godlike mushroom cloud, the word LE7ELS forms like a sign of the second coming and ties into that happened to our office clerk. It’s a karmic time of reckoning as his reality transforms around him.

The label, Avicii and his manager, Ash, all really dug the idea, so Universal pressed play and we started to make it.

———

PRODUCTION

Draw Pictures did the production with EP Christopher Salzgeber. We did street casting to find our talent. I needed regular people that didn’t smell of acting school — People that weren’t dancers but were great at dancing. That’s where I found Ritchie Greenfield, who had studied dance but didn’t come off as contrived. After the video came out he would make appearances with Avicii at concerts dancing on stage to LE7ELS. 

My inspiration for the choreography was based on Bob Fosse (the Little Prince) which if you haven’t seen it, YOU HAVE TO. It definitely inspired Michael Jackson. Also West Side Story (the original) and Krump dancing, which was new at the time.

The shoot was extremely ambitious for the budget. We had one day to go from multiple office building locations to several hospital locations and finally to a green screen. That’s a lot to pull off in a day. I had very intricate story boards and a great AD, Joe Saurez to keep things moving. 

I had to have the green screen for the pushing the rock up the mountain scene. The problem was, before the label could actually see it finished, no one really understood this part of my concept.  We all knew this was the first scene they would cut if we ran out of time. 

I asked the DP David Myrick to use favors to get a better camera and more crew. He said, ‘I can do this favor but I have to know this project is really worth it.’ To some degree you never have a clue about how well a video will be received, but I told him this is definitely the video you want to pull favors for. 

As predicted, we did run out of time and the producers were cutting the green screen scene. As the crew was wrapping up, I grabbed the DP and the lead to shoot the green screen scene against a random wall in the hospital using a green sheet. Rather than the actor walking on a treadmill, I had him push against a wall and walk on a long towel that slid under his feet.  We didn’t have a fan, so I tied strings to his jacket and tie to give them motion as if he was on a windy mountain top. 

With no time to do this we only shot one close up and one wide. Exactly what we shot is in the video. Ritchie Greenfield had to sing at double speed to match the slow motion of the scene. That’s a difficult thing to nail on the first try, somehow he did it.

POST PRODUCTION

We had blown through our entire production budget on the shoot there was nothing left for post. So I edited it myself and did the FX work. The mountain background for the green screen I had used previously in TV on the Radio’s Golden Age video. We didn’t have the time or budget to paint new artwork. And I like having hidden references to previous work in my videos.

Michelle An was the commissioner on the video and we went through very few edit changes. The video just seemed to work right out of the box. That almost never happens. Michelle is a fantastic commissioner, I had the luck of working with her on her fist video in New York for TV On the Radio. 

RECEPTION

The video went on to the MTV awards and was nominated for best video of the year and even best choreography up against Beyonce and Chris Brown. That seemed incredibly unlikely to me. I can only think, as far as choreography, people responded to the fact it didn’t feel like traditional synchronized professionals. But is was really expressive in a very personal way and was used as part of the drama to drive the story. It wasn’t really like choreography in other videos. It all just worked on many levels.