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Section: Music Video

LOS ANGELES--Since collecting MTV's director of the year award for R.E.M.'s 1992 clip "Losing My Religion," the industry's fastest-rising star, Tarsem, removed himself from the music industry as quickly as he had appeared.

It took the mystical strains of the Deep Forest track "Sweet Lullaby" on 550 Music/Epic to awaken the music video muse sleeping inside the director's imagination.

"People think it's next to impossible to get me to like a song, but that's not really true," says Tarsem, a native of India who emigrated to the U.S. on the wings of a Harvard business scholarship. His musical tastes swing from Jethro Tull to J.J. Cale, from Massive Attack to Metallica.

"I may like a song, but I won't know what to do with the video," he explains. "When I feel like I'm the right guy for a song, you'll see me frothing at the mouth."

The hypnotically ambient "Sweet Lullaby" combines contemporary dance rhythms with melodies sampled from the indigenous vocal chants of Central Africa, the South Pacific, and other ancient cultures.

Upon hearing the tune, Tarsem says he was temporarily lured away from the lucrative commercial industry by the pure, young voice of a Pygmy girl singing a cappella at the close of the track.

"I wanted to do the video just so I could use the girl singing this one line," he says. "It's just so brilliant."

Tarsem, who worked on the video -without pay; was inspired to lens a global odyssey to complement the ethereal audio track. The clip follows the voyage of a young girl who travels the world by tricycle in the quest to find sleep.

"I go for the feet of the song, not for what the song is about," says the director, who contributed his own funds to the production. "I am seeking a curve, an ebb, and a flow. I try to take somebody on a journey."

Tarsem and his crew took a journey of their own to shoot "Sweet Lullaby," crossing eight countries on four continents during a 4 1/2-week shoot late last year.

Much of the $150,000 production budget was used for travel and hotel expenses in Spain, China, Russia, India, Kenya, and the U.S., as Tarsem and his skeleton crew traversed the world. The company comprised art director Fatima, producer Dave Ramser, and Ramser's companion, who doubled as camera assistant. Tarsem's niece, Shaan Sahota, portrays the child.

"We would arrive at a location in the afternoon and spend about three hours taking polaroids in the city," says Tarsem. "At dinner, we would decide where to shoot. The next day, we would shoot, and the third day we would leave."

"Sweet Lullaby" is a virtual study in design, as Tarsem toys with visual perspective, creating a series of in-camera special effects during the clip.

"There is no postproduction involved at all-everything is straight cuts, no dissolves," the director says. "You will see a boat that lies fight on the horizon in the foreground of the shot, but you will also see the threads that hold the boat in place."

The closing shot features a character who appears to be walking on water, when in reality he is crossing an invisible tightrope strung on two poles that were supposed to be out of frame.

"I'd planned to take the poles out in post so it would look like he is walking on the horizon," says Tarsem. "But I decided to leave it very raw because it created such a bad special effect when you see that he is walking on a tightrope."

The charm of those "bad" special effects and the lushly surreal imagery in "Sweet Lullaby" has captured the imagination of several video programmers, including MTV, which placed the video in Buzz Bin rotation.

"I was very scared that the music didn't fit into any format, and the video would just go away," says Tarsem. "I would trade the success from all of my pieces to see this video receive airplay. I couldn't be happier."

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By DEBORAH RUSSELL