Filmsupply: So this reel-to-reel tape recorder is something you shot?

Yep. We put that cool orange tape on one of the reels to give it this archival look — we literally made this look like a reel used for archiving. That’s an old Nagra reel-to-reel, I believe. We rented a bunch of different machines to find one that looked just right.

The map wasn’t something we shot. That’s satellite imagery. But there’s a lot of treatment on top of it. I can’t take credit for those pulsating reds in the blacks. That was the art director. But I really love that touch. Everything in this sequence is meant to have the quality of a journal or notebook, which we establish here and continue throughout. Another thing we establish here is the sliding theme, right at the nine-second mark. You’ll see that happen several more times where the layers split, almost like a slide projector or someone examining microfilm. Then obviously we had a lot of fun here playing with cocaine.

Filmsupply: What’s the cocaine?

It’s mostly talcum powder, which is very responsive to sound and vibrations. It has a very amorphous kind of texture. But depending on the shot, we added flour and baking soda as well. In the end, it became our own concoction, which took a lot of experimentation to nail down. We wanted something that breathed, moved, and danced just right.