Nat Shaheen delivers experimental music video for “Keychain”
The music video for “Keychain” was recorded on a cloudy January day in the mountains of Los Angeles National Forest. Drawing inspiration from her childhood, Sally Pfeiffer (Director & Editor) filmed Shaheen traversing the chaparral on a Flip video camera bought off of Ebay for $10 — the same kind she had growing up. The nostalgically grainy video resolution is complemented by frame interpolation and superimposed sketches from Pfeiffer’s archives to evoke a kaleidoscopic, Benadryl-infused fever dream. Sally is primarily a visual artist, so she was interested in superimposing and adding movement to still pieces of her art.
“Most of the video was a product of heavy experimentation. My main form of creation is 2D illustration, so it was difficult for me to even envision a concept for the video until the footage was uploaded into a software. This was the first time I've animated since 2017, so a lot of this process was about relearning how to edit videos, which generated a lot of excitement and pushed me to try out new resources and software such as frame interpolation via AI." - Sally Pfeiffer
These disconnected pieces of media fuse together and give meaning to each other, paralleling the small fragments that form the friendship that Shaheen sings about- a keychain, a letter, a picture from a party.
“At its core, "Keychain" is about loving one another through hardship and about the seemingly inconsequential moments that both can form and break deeply meaningful relationships. I've come to understand that you can love someone with everything you've got, but at the end of the day, you can't control what other people do. Sometimes, loving someone isn't enough of a reason to stick around if you're also suffering. That love doesn't just evaporate, though; it persists, and "Keychain" is proof of that.” - Nat Shaheen
