FROM: MITCH SCHNEIDER/MARCEE RONDAN/LATHUM NELSON

ALANIS MORISSETTE’S

“EIGHT EASY STEPS”

INNOVATIVELY TAKES AN

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL LOOK AT HER LIFE AND CAREER

“How the hell did they do that?”

That’s been the response to early viewings of ALANIS MORISSETTE’s startling video for “Eight Easy Steps,” the new single (from her current SO-CALLED CHAOS Maverick album) in which she addresses destructive traits that undermine one’s self.

The video takes a playful autobiographical look at ALANIS’ life and career in which she sings the words to “Eight Easy Steps,” but with a technological twist.  After opening with new footage of ALANIS and her band performing, she’s magically morphed into her previous videos (including her early Canadian clips), television appearances that predate JAGGED LITTLE PILL and never-before-seen childhood home video footage.  The effect is disarming, and there are many visual treats along the way, among them scenes that required a young girl to sing part of the song.

The “Eight Easy Steps” video moves chronologically backwards, utilizing videos from ALANIS’ most recent clip for “Everything”–the first single from her million-selling SO-CALLED CHAOS album–to her early television career, including the now-famous scene where she’s “slimed” on Nickelodeon’s “You Can’t Do That On Television.”

The “Eight Easy Steps” video reteams Alanis with Liz Friedlander, who also directed the video for Alanis’ “You Learn” from Jagged Little Pill and whose directorial credits include innovative videos for U2, REM and Avril Lavigne.  As Friedlander notes, the video for “Eight Easy Steps” was anything but easy to create.

“The first step was to go through literally hundreds of hours of archival footage of ALANIS,” says Friedlander. ALANIS was instrumental in putting together the pre-edit by choosing the segments ultimately used to synch “Eight Easy Steps.”  She was able to decide what footage was the most monumental to her development as a person and performer respectively.  ALANIS was also present during the final editing process as well, critiquing the effects.

To provide visual continuity throughout, elaborates Friedlander, “We looped each of the shots in a monitor three times–so that ALANIS could do the action three times in a row–and flipped them so ALANIS could mirror the action rather than have to do the opposite of what she was watching.

“ALANIS also nailed–and I mean nailed–the green screen shooting.”  The process of ALANIS recreating facial expressions to match the older footage painstakingly took 16-17 hours. “It was eerie to watch the footage of present day ALANIS run side by side with the early footage,” adds Friedlander.  “Her ability to match her old actions was uncanny.”

Further describing the technological challenges of the process, Friedlander explains:  “Sometimes we replaced only a mouth in a shot, and other times, ALANIS’ whole face.  There were times when the shots would fall into place easily; however, if she was singing really hard in the old footage but really calmly in the new green screen footage, we would have to manipulate ALANIS’ forehead so that it didn’t look like she was belting.”

A key player in the making of the video, according to Friedlander, was Scott McNeil at Jack FX in Venice, CA. “I think he literally worked for over 600 hours on this project.  The thing that was so tricky about this project is that it was unchartered territory and the usual principles of figuring out effects didn’t apply.  Usually, when you do a post-heavy job, after you ‘crack’ the first couple of shots, you can say to yourself,  ‘oh I get it’–there is some kind of formula that can be applied to every shot.’  But in this case, each shot was entirely different and no two shots could be treated the same way.”