When I first heard Nightporter drifting from my brother’s bedroom, I was spellbound. Back in the 80s, this dark and moody ballad owed so much to Erik Satie and suddenly I was hooked on Japan. Nobody else was making music like this. So I was surprised to find that the band hadn’t made an epic music video to accompany the song.

Then I saw the Ripley series, and I thought “This is how the video for Nightporter should have been,” and in a flash the magic carpet of inspiration just swung by. That doesn’t happen very often, so you either jump on and get swept away by the Muse, or you stand there and ask how it’s staying afloat.

Using footage from the Ripley series interspersed with AI animations of the band allowed me to direct my own music video. Each sequence of the band members were created using photoshop collages, which were then fed into Kling AI. Using the image to video function, I created clips which could fit seamlessly into the Ripley footage, and rejected a huge amount of footage in the process.

The theatre was made from stock images, creating the kind of dusty old Weimar era venue that the band could rehearse in.

David Sylvian, the lead singer was then inserted into the theatre with a piano. Remarkably, there was also a function to make the image ‘sing’ – synchronising the mouth of the character to the vocal track.

Steve jansen, the drummer was assigned to string bass duties, since no percussion is used in the song. This was the most successful animation, in my opinion, and I was quietly amazed at the results.

The most satisfying thing of all was asking Kling to make my curtain fall and collapse in a cloud of dust. The project was exhausting and I nearly binned it twice. Then I saw the curtain come down and I just sat back, laughing in shock. It gave me the drive to power through to the end. AI is hugely controversial, but I think you’ll agree, it’s also astonishing. Effectively I’m a Director and this is the result of six month’s work. You don’t just push a button and get what you want from AI -it’s like bottling smoke.

Credits

Ripley
Showtime for Netflix
Director Steven Zaillian
Actors Andrew Scott
Dakota fanning
Maurizio Lombardi
Cinematography Robert Elswit

Nightporter

Composed by David Sylvian

David Sylvian – vocals, piano

Richard Barbieri – keyboards, pianoAndrew Cauthery – oboe

Barry Guy – string bass

Mick Karn, Ann Odell – string bass and oboe arrangement

Still photography

David Sylvian by Anton Corbin 1:02
David Sylvian by Steve Rapport 1:13
David Sylvian Steve Rapport 1:38
David Sylvian Yuka Fujii 2:18
Steve Jansen by Steve jansen 2:40
David Sylvian 2:50 by Simon Gargette
Richard Barbieri Fin Costello 3:52
David Sylvian by Steve Jansen 4:07
David Sylvian by Yuka Fujii 4:13
David Sylvian 4:36 by Yuka Fujii
Mick Karn by Steve Jansen 4:38
David Sylvian by Yoshi Ueda/Yasushi Handa 5:50

Disclaimer: Nightporter is a song by Japan, and the band never appeared in any of the situations depicted in this video. The music and the Ripley footage are used under Creative Commons License. The video is a fan made passion project and not for sale. I’ve tried to credit everyone involved in the making of this video and I hope everyone will accept this tribute to their work.