Prepare to be amazed...and dizzy.
The music video for Ontario folk-rock singer Kalle Mattson's song 'Water Falls' syncs innovative hypnotic effects with the rhythm of the song and it's lyrics. As the song opens, Mattson sings, "With a quiet nod/Patterns arranged/I saw a lifetime pass you by each day" and the camera slingshots on a journey through the city of San Fransisco.
In an email, the Director Kevin Parry stated:
I wanted to capture the slow-pulsing and escalating feel of the song. For years, I've had the idea of animating a camera through and around a city, so I challenged myself to capture the emotion and pace of the song with wherever this technique would take me. I chose the 'hypnosis' visuals to thematically tie the video together and layered that over top of the non-narrative exploration of San Francisco.
There is a lot going on at once. The camera gives a sensation of running and lunging into the air— just to be sprung back in by a bungee cord. A rotating black and white spiral pops up at intervals. Time-lapse photography shows a sped-up clip of runners in a marathon.
But Mattson's boyish vocals and soft, guitar-driven rock sooth the spin. As the visuals speed past, he sings of watching life pass you by. In an email, Mattson explained the concept of the video and hope for it's meaning:
In coming up with the concept for the Water Falls video Kevin (Parry, director) and I tried to emphasis and embrace the dichotomy of the video having a hypnosis theme as well as creating a 'love letter to San Francisco', a city we both love. We used this dichotomy further in the rhythmic syncing of the video to music and the interpretation of the song's lyrics through the various film techniques, hopefully allowing for the visuals to enhance meaning to the song and for the song to enhance meaning to the video.
Water Falls is the first single off of Mattson's Lives In Between EP. The EP and Mattson's previous albums are all available for download on Bandcamp.
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