Metric - Risk, Official Music Video
It was an honor to direct the latest Metric music video for Risk. Last summer, I had the pleasure of working with the band on a documentary series, and in that time I came to appreciate just how intentional and thoughtful their creative process is, especially Emily’s songwriting, which carries both emotional precision and a fearless honesty.
When I asked about the song, Emily described Risk as addressing the dizzying speed at which connections are formed and discarded today, where emotional survival can feel dependent on dexterous texting, and our ability to communicate often falters outside our devices. She speaks to the way self-sabotage, defensiveness, and cynicism can end things before they truly begin, trapping us in cycles we barely recognize. And yet, there’s hope in the idea that another path exists, another way forward, if we’re willing to take the chance.
Inspired by those words, I wanted the video to live inside that emotional space, suspended somewhere between intimacy and distance, clarity and disorientation. I wanted to lean into the interplay of space, time, and light to reflect the tension between connection and isolation, allowing performance and atmosphere to guide the visual language.
Part of that exploration of disorientation came through the way we approached the image itself. So much of how we experience the digital world now is compressed into sharp, fast, disposable fragments, everything optimized for speed, clarity, instant consumption. But that’s not how memory works, and it’s not how emotion feels. Our real experiences blur at the edges. Moments drift in and out of focus. Sometimes clarity arrives late, and sometimes it never fully arrives at all.
I wanted the video to allow for that softness, moments where the image slips slightly out of focus, where light blooms and movement feels suspended. Not as a stylistic trick, but as something closer to how we actually see and remember, imperfect, emotional, fleeting. The softness creates space for reflection, vulnerability, and uncertainty, the very feelings the song wrestles with.
In resisting the impulse to make every image hyper sharp or cut every moment short, we embraced a fluid but ambitious approach, using a continuous oner to help tie the narrative together. This allowed us to give the audience room to breathe inside the performance, to sit with Emily in those in between states where connection feels fragile but still possible. The idea takes shape through a visual journey in which she moves through different environments, some vast and open, others compressed and intimate, mirroring the emotional shifts within the song itself.
The hope was to create something that felt both honest and dreamlike, a visual expression of the vulnerability and courage it takes to risk connection in a world that often makes it feel easier not to.
Producer: Kristina Fleischer
Producer: Rebecca Parks Fernandez
Director: Duane Hansen Fernandez
Director of Photography: Alice Gu
Assistant Camera Op: Chris Jones
Steadicam Operator: Travis Montgomery
Hair & Make Up: Gina Ribisi
Editor: Hugh Westhoff
2nd AC/DIT: Nick Strauser
Gaffer: Scott Spencer
Grip: David Gonzalez
Best Boy: David Albarran
