The archive · Content & Film · Marketing decision · 2023
Thom Draft's Tense is filmed entirely on cast smartphones — a warning about phone life
Director Albert Albert shot Thom Draft's Tense on the phones of its cast, with no crew or cinema cameras, so the viewer lives a bullied girl's screen life.
Thom Draft
What it had to solve
Thom Draft's debut EP needed a music video, and director Albert Albert (Thierry Albert) chose a story about L, a teenage girl bullied at school who suddenly develops a bizarre superpower and becomes an overnight social-media star. Because the tale is a warning about living life through a phone lens, the brief was absolute: everything shot on smartphones by the cast, no crew and no fancy cameras — 'no cheating' — with the film designed to be watched on a phone.
How it works
Tense, a track from electro artist Thom Draft's debut EP, got a music video whose subject is the very device it was made on. Directed by Albert Albert (Thierry Albert), it tells the story of L, a teenage girl bullied at school who discovers a bizarre superpower and becomes an overnight social-media star — before being upstaged by someone even stranger.
The creative constraint carried the idea. Because the story warns about living life through a phone lens, the brief demanded that everything be shot on smartphones by the cast: no film crew, no sophisticated cameras, no cheating. The cast filmed from three points of view — the heroine, one of her bullies, and bystanders uploading the action — and the film was built to be watched on a phone.
Execution was disciplined: a frame-by-frame storyboard, ten teenagers filming on their phones in the gymnasium scene, and editor Jon Echeveste assembling the layers. The result is four minutes in which the viewer is inside L's phone — the audience experiences what she experiences rather than watching from outside.
The video is preserved in the D&AD awards archive under Music Videos, with the page recording no view counts, and the creative press covered it as an original phone-shot narrative. Its lesson outlives the single: make the medium the message, and the warning lands in the viewer's own hands.
Why it lands
- Shot by the cast on their own phones, the video feels like lived experience rather than a film about phones.
- Three in-story points of view put the viewer inside the bully-victim-uploader dynamic that social media creates.
- No crew and no cinema cameras forced every shot through the same technology the story warns about, so the medium cannot be denied.
- Designing the film for phone viewing means the warning arrives on the exact screen where the behaviour happens.
What it did
The video is preserved in the D&AD awards archive under Music Videos and was covered by the creative press as an original phone-shot narrative; its D&AD page records no view counts.
What you can take
When the warning is about a medium, constrain the production with it: forcing every frame through the characters' phones makes the audience feel the condition instead of hearing it described.
Since then
Tense stayed in the D&AD awards archive under Music Videos as an example of a phone-only production, with its page recording no view counts. The lasting takeaway was procedural: by handing the cameras to the characters, the film made its cautionary tale about screen life inseparable from the experience of watching it on a screen.
Sources
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