Philippa Price Talks Directing Katy Perry’s “Never Really Over” Music Video.

Philippa Price talked with MTV about directing Katy Perry’s “Never Really Over” music video and how she went about showing “what you go through in heartbreak in a very visual way.” You can watch the video here.

Another one of those “camp activities” that Perry takes part in is the nurturing and gardening of her heart. Price explained, “The camp is a program, and there’s all these daily activities, but what is the long-term goal that you reach? I thought that you regrow your heart, and you water your heart with your tears.

“There’s this place in France where they grow pears on trees and they put the glass bottles over the pears while they’re tiny so that the pears grow inside the bottles,” the director continued. “Then they ferment the pear and it turns into this alcohol with this giant pear in the middle. I was like, we could maybe do something like that with a heart, and at the end, you drink your new heart at this kind of ayahuasca ceremony.”

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“A lot” of Perry’s movements were improvised, and were conceived out of conversations Price had with the singer about conveying her feelings through gesture and movement, “rather than a literal narrative, which she usually has in her videos.” That approach resulted in some of the vid’s most memorable moments, like Perry squishing her mouth against a glass door and sliding down; it was a scene that capitalized on her “weirdness and quirkiness,” Price said.

“We did all of these things where I was like, you know, when you’re a little kid and you’re so excited that all your muscles tense? OK, let’s do a performance like that,” the director explained. “She got really into it, and that slide down the window was improvised as we were doing it. I definitely wanted this to have a more emotional tone, but keep this funny, quirky humor throughout.”

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The ascendant single is presumably the first taste of Perry’s upcoming fifth album, and while she hasn’t fully unpacked the song’s inspiration, Price suggested that it’s a more personal offering from the pop star.

“I can’t speak to the meaning behind the song for her, but I do know that this video was quite personal,” she said. “I think she loved the concept behind the video because she seems to be really be working on healing, and she definitely put a lot of personal experience into this world, like with the acupuncture. I think that she really got into it because there’s a lot of things that she’s working on personally that she was able to channel into this world.”