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.
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.