The inventiveness of City of Angels.
Music works like a symbol of our memories, a monument, or keyframes in our timeline. Music makes you remember parts of your life, one specific aesthetic, and specific experiences.
Ladytron brings up that feeling of traveling back to the past. A foggy past between small nightclubs, concerts, and the grainy reverberation of our memories.
You may find in your memories a different version of yourself, you may discover that your old versions still want to exist and probably you are the one holding the privileges of existence. Your past version of yourself, like a ghost, gets back to negotiate with you asking for more time. Asking to take control again.
Negotiating with a ghost of yourself is a tricky experience. Frustration is inevitable, because you are both characters, and someone will lose.
Redemption comes from acceptance and not denying the right to exist.
Redemption comes from acceptance and not denying the right to exist.
The possible peace between these two characters is, in my opinion, not about prevailing, but coexistence. You dominate the brave, young, determined version of yourself by flexing your boundaries and letting this character in again. Just for a while, just while it is useful. Then, eventually, you get back to the present.
This motivation is what started this music video as a project for me and some decisions during the process are very personal but still connected to this first motivation. The black and white lab is part of my early life as a photographer, the new monumental concrete house represents our present, the aim to build our castles and solid structures. Marina is an icon, representing the nightlife, music, and my first years as a fashion photographer. Bianca represents part of my future, she is my partner in an evolving career in fiction films. The liquid from the lab/past invades the concrete walls. The light from the lab projector becomes the light in the house. The hazy atmosphere in the music and in the images are all connected to this attempt to navigate between uncertain landscapes.
This thought became more and more important during the process. After we started the music video production, a sense of independence and personal expression started to grow inside me and I tried to pass this perception on and on to everyone on the team.
I asked Bianca to write something about her experience during this process:
"The main idea behind the story was a woman, me, facing an entity. The entity was an idea we were still dwelling with, who was the entity? What kind of entity?
I had always imagined the entity as her alter ego who was possessing her, taking over. But we were also considering it to be an outside presence that takes over her and makes her do things she’d never do.
We worked on that duality with Ariany, our choreographer. How to translate all that to the body, to each move. During this process we created a crescendo, from running away from the entity to facing the entity and finally dominating it. Dominating herself in a way, her wild self.
But our biggest breakthrough was when we figured out that the entity was the actual song, personified by the entity, beautifully portrayed by Marina Dias. That’s when it all came together. The song was the one possessing her.
As she was in the darkroom printing photos she starts to be possessed by the entity/song and is transported to a different place.
As she was in the darkroom printing photos she starts to be possessed by the entity/song and is transported to a different place.
As the photos she took of herself are being processed she is deep within herself, facing the entity. At the end after she’s danced with the entity, she faces it and is ready to become a different woman. Accepting and allowing her wilder self to surface. And all that is symbolized by the printed picture at the end.
All this was built together with Manuel and Ariany, during our rehearsals. We also carefully adapted the ideias we previously had during rehearsals to what we ended up having on set. We allowed ourselves to improvise and cut the choreography into separate pieces and we would play with them as we shoot.
It was truly a very sensorial and liberating experience. I followed my instinct as a performer and let myself be guided by Manuel. We were in deep sync and fully trusting each other. "
It gets really interesting when everyone embraces this kind of commitment. The choreographer, the talents, the stylist, the make-up artist, the photographer, everyone was creating. Not translating or following specific orders. By adding their own personal interpretations of the song and their perception of the story that we were creating, the project becomes alive.
