Serving as a music video for Building Instrument’s song, Straight Down (Rett Ned) is a trippy animation created by Simone Hooymans. Presenting various bizarre worlds in a seemingly unending journey, it perfectly accompanies the band’s music.
The first frames give the start to the journey in a forest full of birch trees which seems rather lifeless at first, but after a few seconds, it is invaded by tens of species of flowers which bloom instantly, from every corner, making it a rather colorful place and making the forest come to life.
Soon after, the journey moves to what seems to be a swamp, a green stretch of land from which egg shaped things rise into the air, making their grassy leaves, which look like human hair, flutter in the wind. Then, drops of dew start falling upwards and this combination of the color green and water symbolizes the vitality and the miracle that nature offers. Moreover, even if the song is called “straight down”, everything seems to be going upwards in the animation, and this contradiction between the title and what the spectator sees makes the video much more intriguing, playing with the use of perspective in the human mind.
The next place the journey takes the viewer to is a forest full of white pine trees where multiple species of mushrooms can be observed on the ground. This might be a subtle allusion to psychedelic mushrooms, which contain psilocybin, a compound which can give its consumer an extraordinarily bizarre visual trip, not unlike this animation. As these mushrooms are said to have been used by shamans, this takes the video into a more mysterious dimension or even a spiritual one. The viewer knows nothing of these worlds he is being presented, but in spite of this, they somehow seem familiar.
Afterward, as the trees in the forest are slowly but surely replaced by buildings, the viewer’s mind immediately sprints to the expression “concrete jungle”. A sphere made out of buildings rises into the sky, and the pointy ends of some of them make the sphere look like a clock. This, of course, brings into discussion the topic of time and how everybody deals with it, whether they have too much or they have too little. It makes the spectator think of the hustle and bustle of modern life, how everything seems to be going faster and he loses himself in the concrete jungle.
Despite seeming rather abstract and bizarre at first, this animated video very subtly hides multiple thought provoking themes in the midst of its peculiar looking worlds, not to mention the fact that it also seems to be the perfect illustration for the song. Speaking of life, mystery and the modern-day struggle of man, it is as thoughtful as it is mesmerizing.
Bucharest ShortCut Cinefest, Januari 2017.
