Get your bread and sliced tomatoes ready - today we're bringing you some authentic 80s-style cheese. Directed by Johanna Andersson of Nexus Productions, the video for Reaching Out by Nero will take you right back to the days of Miami Vice and Dallas.
The majority of the visuals in this new promo rely on authentic 80s stock footage that Andersson found delving into the Corbis Motion archives. The speeding 911s, big hair bikini-clad babes, chunks of bling, mirror-glass skyscrapers and beaches at sunset were all perfect for the yacht-rock aesthetic the director wanted. The material was edited together with an array of esoteric 80s-style effects to complete the pastiche in perfect sympathy with the music, which is based on a Hall and Oates track.
If you love VHS standard production values and the opulence of the era, you'll be inspired by Johanna Andersson's work. “The idea was to reference TV title sequences from the 80s, like Miami Vice and Kojak. By using authentic stock footage we tell the story of a young couple hustling all the way top," she says.
So the excitement builds with kaleidoscopic flamingos, a huge neon Nero logo, mirror-image white tigers, glowing diamond patterns and sparlkling red lips as the imaginary characters race off into the sunset - with the cash. Screen-in-screen edits are used relentlessly as well, harking back to the fades, spins and wipes which seemed so cutting edge back in the day.
"When we sent off the work in progress to Nero, the comments that kept coming back were 'more girls'," adds Andersson. "We didn’t have any more footage of 80s girls in bikinis so we had to look around the office. And let me tell you, I saw a completely new side of our receptionist, Sarah."
