Video Work with Craig Smith (2024-)

With the release of Smith’s newest record, Emerald Cut, Marina began making visual accompaniments to each of the 13 tracks on the album. Below are the Spotify Canvas snippets from each 3min-5min video, all of which have been live-mixed and projected around Craig Smith during performances in Norman, OK (4/24) and Buffalo, NY (12/24).

Work Process

The process for developing these videos emerged when Marina listened to the final track on Emerald Cut, “Contingency.” Reminiscent of one of Smith’s previous albums, Parasite, the droning bass and guitar track fit snugly with Craig’s Morrison-esque preaching. Somewhere between spoken word, street-corner gospel, and ominous warning, this track hooked Marina as they instantly developed an accompanying video. Though the video for Contingency is not included in the forged-footage visualizers, it was created as a live-action video with Marina’s sister, Milan Sachs. View the video for Contingency here.

Instead of shooting all of the videos live-action, Marina requested search engine terms from Smith; for each song that he anticipated playing live (which includes tracks from previous albums and a few cover songs, including Dylan’s It’s All Over Now Baby Blue and The Grogg’s Wild Thing), Smith sent over 5-8 search terms that he felt visually connected with the songs both lyrically and sonically. With the search terms, Marina scoured the internet for footage, screen-recorded each video clip, and stitched together over an hours-worth of footage from 5-8 second clips.

Once finished, the full-length videos were premiered in April ‘24 at the Normal Music Festival, and live-mixed behind Smith’s performance. The videos were resurrected for a second time for a performance at The Cave in Buffalo, New York in December ‘24. Coverage of the live performance in Buffalo, NY and Smith’s articulation about the videos here.

Performances to include Craig Smith, Norman-based Dave Copenhaver (on bass), Buffalo-based opener The Vores, and visualizers by Marina Sachs are anticipated to be scheduled for Ohio and Texas in 2025.

Artist Statement (2024)

The archive of videos, like the record, deals with Americana. Rather than talking about patriotism, each of these songs tackles a specific event or occurence that is uniquely American in ways that don’t overtly use religion or politics to establish what is / isn’t “American.” Smith’s record traces small-town loves, and makes reference to specific geographic markers, records and release years, and cultural signifiers from skateboarding, post-punk, American sports, and experimental drug culture. The record sounds like a kid who grew up in a smaller town in rural America — a town that had suburbs, though — with a lot of exposure to cultural, political, pop, and creative influences from beyond that town.

The videos echo Smith’s sentiment, combining footage with year- and location-based cultural specificity mixed with broadly-recognizable film images. The videos include footage from mental hygiene PSA’s, Hollywood blockbusters, space-age science studies, Smithsonian archive cultural videos, and lots of clips of people dancing. This project took around 6 months to complete, as each clip was stitched and paced to each song, with modifications made between the recorded tracks and the live performances.

Listen to Emerald Cut (2023)

Clips from Marina’s full-length videos