Next Year

About

Phil Harder, the creative mind behind countless music videos including a large selection of tracks by The Afghan Whigs was hired to direct the video for ‘Next Year’, the fourth and final single from ‘There Is Nothing Left to Lose’. For the single release of the song a new, shorter mix of the track was created by Dave Way and this version was also used on the music video production, meaning only 3 minutes and 21 seconds of footage was required, rather than the original 4-minute 36 runtime.

The treatment for the video by Harder would see the band going on an unspecified space mission before returning to a hero’s welcome, tying into the themes of the song.

The music video used NASA library footage from the real Apollo 11 mission throughout with creative digital editing placing the band in several real videos, such as President Nixon greeting the astronauts in a quarantine unit. This style of editing was frequent in Hollywood at the time with another well-known usage of the technique in Forrest Gump, editors adding that character into many videos of historical events. Further editing of the original footage would see Foo Fighters logos placed on the astronauts and even adding the name in text to the shuttle body, replacing the genuine ‘United States’ text. Further doctoring of stock footage sees the homecoming parade in New York in 1969 with banners welcoming the astronauts back to earth replaced to welcome Foo Fighters instead.

Footage of the astronauts on the surface of the moon were also edited, the flag astronaut Armstrong places onto the surface of the moon now adorned with the classic FF logo.

Whilst most of the footage used came from around the Apollo 11 mission one scene showing the band standing behind Nixon giving a speech came from the later Apollo 13 mission, with the original astronauts’ heads replaced by those of the band members.

These edited scenes were interspersed with completely original footage of the band in astronaut gear, which was filmed at Universal Studios, Hollywood using green screen technology. According to director Harder they used the same film that the astronauts used in the real mission, a mixture of Super 8mm and 16mm film stock. Scenes meant to show the band playing their instruments in the Apollo 11 module were not filmed in a zero-gravity room for budget reasons, instead they were shot in a small space capsule that NASA had used in training for the real mission, a replica of the real thing. The capsule just happened to be stored at Universal Studios as Ron Howard had been using it for the Apollo 13 blockbuster movie a few years earlier.

To create the illusion of zero gravity wires were used to hold the band members in place and various props were hung with fishing wire. Taylor and his drum kit were on a crane platform which moved back and forth to create the floating effect. Whilst these tricks were mostly edited out in post-production wires suspending Nate can however still be momentarily seen around 1 minute 53 seconds into the video.

Director Phil Harder also had a small cameo in the video, appearing as a technician trying to instruct the band how to use gaffer tape to fix a problem in the space module. This was again a recreation of a real event of the Apollo 13 space mission which saw the astronauts required to use duct tape and surplus material to create a makeshift air filtration system to keep them alive on their journey back to earth.

The video debuted in July 2000 on MTV.