Directed and edited by Kai Lossgott.

Camera: Ntebo Rajuili.

Art director: Cat Pritchard.

Producer: Darren Jay-Hart.

Vocals: Nigel Edkins.

Lyrics: Mervin Griffiths, both of the PE based band "Smile".

Song recorded at Corrine Cooper Studios, Grahamstown.

Shot within a week on location in a derelict factory in Grahamstown and edited during two weeks.

What went wrong

It could be about love. It could be about childhood. It could be about time and the human yearning for transcendence. The song was written after a family member's suicide. In this sense it is about an inexplicable loss, entering chaos and ordering it again. Again, this was one of the key strategies in editing it.

We came together because we liked the song. It takes its time. It tells a story. It asks a question. What went wrong?

"How easy it is to smile, and not mean it," says lead guitarist and songwriter Merv glancing at his friend Nigel, when you ask them why they called their Port Elizabeth based band 'Smile'. "What went wrong" is a deceptively friendly song. It seems like post-breakup song to an ex-girlfriend. Actually, it was written for Merv's brother after he committed suicide. Its about things that are lost and will never return and which cannot be explained. One of those things is childhood, and for us four young adults looking out into the professional world of television, this project became a search for the magic which we all somehow felt we had lost.

"What went wrong" is a quest. There is very little else which I can say. And at the same time, I can say an awful amount. Quests occur in the spaces between problems and solutions. Its an empty space, this space inside, like a dream or the collective unconscious. And the images, words, sounds and meanings available to the viewer of the video are open and unspecified. Something happens, and we attach a meaning to it, and then something else happens, and we think 'Yes! I was right.' And we construct a story and make meanings which are valuable to our lives.

Some people want it to be a story about love and heartbreak, because that's what they're used to from music videos and that's on a lot of people's minds. Some people think its about time, and memory, and transcending the past. Some might see it as a meditation on reading and writing stories. We wanted it to be about all these things. But mostly we wanted it to be about the meanings people would be able to put into the empty spaces opened by the act of consuming this video.

My inspiration as director came from the little girl in Diego Velasquez' 17th century painting 'Las Meninas'. Definitely a child, yet not a child - a princess of the Spanish court, Marguerita looked out at me one evening from across the centuries through the hall of mirrors which surround her. The precocious look in her eye, and yet it was a painting in a book in a library. There was magic there, and I smiled at her and set out to make some of my own.