Steven Wilson :  People Who Eat Darkness

Directed by Jess Cope.

Steven’s song, ‘People Who Eat Darkness’ addresses the subject of terrorism and the uncomfortable thought that you could quite literally be living next door to a terrorist and never know until it was too late. Originally when we chatted about the concept, I thought I would tackle the subject head-on and do something quite hard hitting. But whilst I was midway through writing a narrative in which my main protagonist was constructing a home-made explosive device, the Manchester arena bombing happened, and it stopped me in my tracks. The video was specifically for Steven’s show and I realised the perception of doing something so literal could backfire badly if a real attack took place somewhere while he was on tour. I still wanted to stick with the theme, but like all of my videos I aim to take a theme and twist it into something a little less “realistic and a bit more supernatural. So, terrorism turned into an alien invasion, something perhaps along the lines of ‘The Faculty’ meets ‘Rear Window’. During my research I decided that the two-tone Hitchcock poster-style artwork would look awesome for the look of the film. The whole thing was animated and coloured digitally, but to avoid it being totally computer generated, I insisted that the artwork be hand drawn by the brilliant illustrator, Adam Oehlers".

Find out more about the film and Steven's music here.