Jemapur - Maledict Car

Jemapur - Maledict Car (YouTube)
Jemapur - Maledict Car (QuickTime) [BACON]

Director Kosai Sekine's clip for Jemapur is a collection of mirrored views of Tokyo at night. A single-minded focus on a simple technique (plus a city full of excellent source material) leads to a beautifully evocative piece.

Sekine explains the video's concept:

When I first listened to the track, it reminded me of geometric and mathematical imagery, and perspective views of Tokyo. So for this music video, I’d like to propose to develop an intricate visual montage or series of patterns of multiple Tokyo cityscapes. The urban swirl of buildings, neon signs, vending machines, expressways, these are all very familiar sights, though I also wanted to include the people and characters who live within this patchwork environment. This idea began to expand and became amplified into a more formal visual pattern like that of a mandala or kaleidoscope.

This led me to decide on a direction and concept for this promo, with the theme of “let’s look behind Tokyo, read between the lines, by developing various visual patterns”. The landscape of the city will be portrayed geometrically. Using simple editing approaches such as inversion, split screen and collage, we look into the varying parts of Tokyo by amplifying and multiplying them. Seeing these visuals, the audience will be impressed by the beauty of the city, though at the same time they may also sense something odd, have a feeling of floating, or perhaps think of ugliness, and be disorientated or confused. Not only shooting the landscape, we’ll also shoot portraits of people who are living in Tokyo. Again we will use similar editing and compositing techniques, though the people featured will add some depth, humanity and character to the visuals.

Thanks to Susanne.

Comments

[yoyo]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa7OHSnwRAY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOIpl2stis4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImUCgfvEvAs&feature=related