Israeli Directors Win MTV Award for Coldplay's 'Up&Up'

Gal Muggia and Vania Heymann take visual effects VMA for their video, which has been described as "brilliantly weird."

Aug 29, 2016

An image from the Coldplay’s video 'Up&Up.' Credit: Roman Linetsky

Aug 29, 2016

Israeli directors Gal Muggia and Vania Heymann won an MTV visual effects award for Coldplay’s music video “Up&Up" at the VMA's held at New York's Madison Square Garden on Sunday evening.

“These are pretty prestigious awards in the world of music videos,” Muggia said after first learning the clip had been nominated for the visual effects award as well as the directing award, which ended up going to Beyonce's "Formation."

The often eerie video, created for a track on Coldplay's latest album, "A Head Full of Dreams," stitches together different pictures to create incongruous new images, a technique known as compositing.

The video has been described as “brilliantly weird.” Among other things, if features a “volcano that pops out popcorn, a baby that flies on the wing of a plane and skydivers who jump into a bowl of pasta.” Heymann and Muggia themselves had described it as “a poignant, surrealist montage which alludes to contemporary issues.”

Coldplay's lead vocalist, Chris Martin, has lauded the clip "one of the best videos people have made.” In the few months since its release, it has been viewed well over 75 million times on YouTube.