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SPARK was the first video from From the Choirgirl Hotel. A segment for Spark was reportedly shot on March 21-24, 1998 in the UK by video director James Brown.
Tori really wanted to work with James Brown, but he came up with an idea that she didn't like, and she told him she wanted to do something "where a girl has a will to live"...The video was shot in Dartmoor, which is in Southern England. The shoot was three days. You don't really know what's going to happen to her, but that's not the point. She's trusting her instincts in a way she never has before, she's finding something in herself she never knew even existed. The man who's trying to find me, probably is the driver. You don't really know too much about him, but you know she's got to get away from him. The water shot - it was about an hour and a half. It was 5:30 at night, and the sun was going down. [switches to up-close shot where she wriggles from the blindfold] Here, right here, I'm in a different water tank, and they had me swimming around for a while trying to get close-up shots. [About the overhead shot where we see "Tori" running along the banks of the river directly after the water sequence] Well, that was my double, right there. She was walking in a forest while I was shooting all this, because it took hours to get those two seconds. I had changes of clothes - I had wet clothes and dry clothes, and in the middle of the forest the girls would stand around me in their parkas and I'm putting the wet clothes on and putting on the muddy clothes to get the right outfit at the right time. "Here [the car at the end], these two are brother and sister, and they're in the album artwork, where they look like angels in the artwork, although here they're very much like the Village of the Damned. You don't know what's going to happen to this girl, but she has a will to live"
-- Tori; MTV Artist Cut, May 2 & 14, 1998
"I don't know about making pop videos. I know about you know, making little films. That's what I try to do. What it was really about is this woman is in a situation and you find out later she was in the trunk of this car, and miraculously this car accident saves her life. To have your hands tied behind your back and be blindfolded to have that experience and really have to get from one end of Dartmoor to the other it was... you hear better, your instincts get better.."
-- Tori; The Chart Show, Apr 25, 1998
A parallel. obviously. People have said to me that they found the video disturbing. I guess facing Death is just that. I didn't want a play by play on film of the literal meaning
of Spark. So I would spend hours talking to James (Brown the Director) about circumstances out of your control and having to find this will in yourself that you didn't know you had. I've said before
that Spark is about a girl having a Really Bad day.
Angels. I knew I wanted "them" represented in some way. Someone had said to me after the miscarriage, "Well, at least the Angels were with you..." NO, I said. they went to a rave
and why not. When the wolf is at your door, there is no insurance no distracting him her.
No angel can or has the power to break Universal law, not with this wolf at my door.
Water. The rhythm of the water in the tropics where I wrote 'Choirgirl' was the element that
brought me strength to my woman, who was truly in NO MAN'S land after losing the baby. So James said to me that water had to be the turning point the pivot where my character
transforms.
The ominous pulse of the video was no different than the feeling I had the day. Spark is based on
Death Lurking...
--Tori, "Tori Stories, her take on the videos" promo booklet
Spark was released in collectible form in the Tori Amos Video Compilation.
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