My music video for Base-journey by Phoneutrian, Interworld Media, 2018.

This song for me is very emotive & evokes a strong sense of feeling alone in a crowded environment, so I endeavoured to articulate this feeling of solitude.
One of my favourite things to watch, as previously mentioned, is slow movement. I’m a big fan of ‘slow-t.v.’ and anything which involves the gradual transition of form. Furthermore, I recalled a powerful experience exploring spaces which are usually busy but now are empty (Kenopsia).

I used these experiences to draw inspiration from primarily because of how removed the vocal lines are in the song, it instantly made me feel like I’m inside a vast cavern, glimmers of human interaction echoing off the walls, like the dying hiss of reverb desperately trying to stay alive! Moreover, I had experienced many long car journeys growing up and would routinely try and create patterns in what I was seeing as a way of keeping myself entertained.

I had previously enjoyed sessions viewing ‘Night Walk/Ride‘, which is a ”
first-person view of a trip through part of Toronto during the late-night hours, accompanied by Jazz ” and found them comparable to my present-day late-night/early-morning walks home from work. I decided to use this footage instead of trying to re-create my own as I felt I would create a poor recreation, also I felt that it may date the video tremendously if I used contemporary footage as opposed to the ‘Nightwalk’ footage, which was shot in the 80s. But isn’t the 80s footage dated as well? Well yes, however, I feel that using found footage doesn’t recall as strong a sense of specific location or date for me. Whereas if I had used contemporary footage, I feel it would have seemed like I was overtly trying to say something about that specific space/time. Which is exactly the opposite of what I wanted: a universal experience of travelling alone.

One of my favourite music videos of all time, which undoubtedly had a very discernible impact on me is for the Chemical Brothers song ‘Star Guitar’ directed by Michel Gondry. Its influence on me and my life is palpable and it still gives me goosebumps every single time I watch it.

If I was to start this project again I would probably choose to use a wider variety of footage. Whilst I used a wide palette of material I chose to exclude some footage due to a wide difference in colour levels. Whilst recognising those as different is obviously important I feel that I could have used them elsewhere in the project, working with their differences as opposed to against them.