Tiga - Hot In Herre

EyeballNYC director, Alex Moulton, and Thomas “Lord of the Marionette” Sontag recently teamed up to co-direct “Hot in Herre” a tongue-in-cheek music video for Montreal’s premiere DJ, Tiga.

The song is a rousing cover version of Nelly’s smash single of the same name. Tiga is known as one of Montreal’s best DJ’s and producers, delivering minimal beats with a lighthearted sensibility.

The video, produced in early April, is to be released worldwide by electronic music label !K7. It stars marionette puppets operated by Sontag, dancing in a series of slick CG backgrounds that caricature and pay homage to big budget, over-the-top hip-hop videos.

The creative concept for the video was a collaborative effort between Moulton and Sontag. “’Lord of the Marionette’ is primarily a live concept,” says Sontag. “Most of my work has been at concerts and parties.

My apprehensions at working with other people on what had previously been a personal project were very quickly assuaged by the creative advantages of working with talented people.”

“Tiga was very excited about using Thomas’s marionettes, so Thomas and I came up with a dream list of locations and sets for the video and worked backwards from there,” adds Moulton, who handled editing and cinematography duties in addition to his co-director role.

“We really wanted to make this feel as much like a true hip-hop video as possible – Thomas and I directly referenced larger than life scenes in videos from artists like Puffy, Missy Elliot and 50 Cent in coming up with the concepts for the different backgrounds.”