At a distance, the sea is blue| Research and planning

 

At A Distance, The Sea is Blue

Introduction

The title I chose for my experimental film is “ At a distance, the sea is blue”. This name is based on KBS 2TV’s popular 2021 drama and webtoon, which follows the journey of college students who come to face the harsh realities of the world. The name is based on the title “ At a distance, spring is green” which means that even if your life seems beautiful and joyous from afar like a subtle day in spring from afar, up close it is almost always harsh and cold. So basically, At a distance, the sea is indigo means that from afar the sea always looks beautiful with everblue waves and cobalt shades. But if one dives into the sea and looks closer and deeper, the sea is not as calm and welcoming as it appears to be. Aligned with this concept, the protagonist of the music video is a young boy who believes finding love is calming and beautiful like the sea from afar, but when he dives into it, he comes in contact with the harsh reality of unrequited love.

As an artist, it is of utmost importance to create works that are connected to our perceptions and experiences, and making that work experimental gives it even more depth. Since the past few years, I have always worked on academic projects which target more worldly affairs and social issues, but for this specific work I wanted to pour my own personal experiences into it. Unrequited love is something I have personally felt a lot more times than enough, and it is a unique emotion that I have grown so used to that I have almost become fond of the feeling. As an artist, I felt the need to express these feelings through experimental work, and because I have such excruciating yet blissful knowledge of how it actually feels like again and again,  and how it can be depicted visually. 

Being someone who has spent most of her life in love with fictional characters, i feel like it is only fair of me to create something that speaks from my heart and not hands, the feelings of unrequited love have always welcomed me and i feel confident to show them through illustrations. 

Research and Planning

The basic plotline of my experimental music video is “ iso no awabi (の アワビ)” which is a Japanese saying that translates into “ An abalone on the shore”. The original story is about a man who dives into the sea looking for a rare marine snail called abalone, but he is not able to find it, which basically indicates that no matter how much the person tries, he cannot find the answer to his one-sided love. As someone who is fond of Japanese and Chinese cultures and folktales, I find this storyline quite sorrowful yet beautiful, as it depicts a harsh reality through the waves of the sea. The main focus of the storyline is not that the person is not able to have or receive his lover’s affection, it inclines more towards “having hope and looking for something even though you are aware of its impossibility”. That person who is searching for precious abalone shells, without a care for the end result or the process, dives into the sea and spends so much time searching for them over and over again. No matter where he looks and how much he tries, he is not able to grasp it. There is utter sadness yet hopefulness in this feeling, it is indeed a unique emotion to feel despair and hope both for something.  As for the abalone, the animatic itself won’t have direct and obvious illustrations depicting his story, I have planned to create and add certain artworks that indirectly show marine shells and the sea.

Before getting further into the storyline, I would like to point out why abalone is so focused and highlighted here. The Abalone Pearls is a type of marine gastropod (sea snail) of the genus Haliotis (from the Greek for "sea ear") with an ear-shaped shell that has a row of holes on the outermost edge. Due to their Latin name and shape, they are also known as "ear shells". Like other marine gastropods, the abalone produces pearls. Natural abalone pearls are extremely rare. The color of these rare pearls reflects the color of the shell interior. Like the shell interior of the abalone, the pearls are of various colors, such as cream, blue, green, red, and purple. Abalone can form pearls, and these can be made into jewelry. They are exceptionally rare, so it is very lucky to find abalone pearls.They form in the mother-of-pearl shell, at the edge of the shell, or in the gut. Only one in several hundred abalone mollusks will form pearls. The most common use of the abalone shell is for jewelry and gifts. The worth of abalone jewelry is so much that it is almost considered equivalent to gold and diamonds. So this is why the importance of these shells being so rare and metaphorically hard for the protagonist to search for noted in the concept. The following image, Abalone Abstract 2 is a photograph by Dawn Broom which was uploaded on November 6th, 2014. The photograph is an example of how I intend to illustrate and depict abalone throughout the video with visual elements. 

Fig. 1 Abalone Abstract 2 by Dawn Broom

Fig. 2 Galaxy like abalone 

Unrequited love occurs for many different reasons and the interesting part is that to this date, there is no actual reason why romantic attraction goes unreciprocated or rejected. Research in social psychology indicates that people tend to prefer a romantic partner who is as physically attractive as, if not more physically attractive than, they are. Platonic friendships can also lead to unrequited love. Even though love will often go unreciprocated because of mismatches in mate value, would-be lovers could misread or misinterpret positive gestures and intimacies from a platonic friend as romantic feelings. This can lead would-be lovers to over-interpret the likelihood of gaining the love of their friend and want more from the platonic friendship than is desired by the target of their affection. Unrequited love is characterized by mutual incomprehension. Would-be lovers characterize the rejecter as sending mixed signals and acting in inconsistent ways, whereas rejecters typically do not understand why the would-be lover continues to pursue them past the point of rejection.

Someone who suffers from unrequited love would always label their love as ‘ true and real’, but there are some psychologists who debate with this and say that unrequited love is actually a form of ‘ unrealistic infatuation’ and that people who go through this feeling might end up only being ‘ overly obsessed’ with the person they like. This really depends on the case as it is wrong to judge someone’s love for someone based on such claims. 

Looking at it more closely, It is believed that one sided love in particular has been pictured as a noble and unselfish willingness to accept suffering.  Despite the pain that often accompanies having love rejected, would-be lovers look back at the experience with a mixture of positive and negative emotions. Would-be lovers describe the experience as a roller coaster of emotions, filled with many euphoric highs but also devastating lows. This is exactly what I intend to show in my animatic, as the protagonist in my music video searches for something that is impossible to have but he still relishes the experiences and has a light of hope in his sorrow.

Some novel quotes that contribute a lot towards the foundation of the visual elements in my video are as follows:

“You just know something is amiss, when you look at someone and long for something that is not yours or you cannot have. It’s an absence–a loss of a heartbeat.”

 

― Nadège Richards, Burning Bridges

 

“Unrequited love does not die; it’s only beaten down to a secret place where it hides, curled and wounded. For some unfortunates, it turns bitter and mean, and those who come after pay the price for the hurt done by the one who came before.”

― Ellie Newmark, The Book of Unholy Mischief

 

“The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd – The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.”

― Fernando Pessoa

One of my utmost favorite sayings about unrequited love is from “ The Truth About Forever”, and it basically explains how one sided love in itself is actually better than reciprocated love. Yet it is still the cruelest punishment. It is something that is done silently in pain, but this is specifically why it is better than any other love, as it dwells in bittersweetness. It is the same feeling that we might get from one of our fictional crushes, the utter bliss of loving a fictional character to the fullest without the fear of cause or consequence is truly insane. 

“I have to admit, an unrequited love is so much better than a real one. I mean, it's perfect... As long as something is never even started, you never have to worry about it ending. It has endless potential.” ― Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever (2004).

Theme

One of the most interesting elements about this music video, apart from the visuals on screen, is the theme. The theme is based on a color scheme known as “ Rose Period” by Pablo Picasso ( 1904-1906).

Pablo Picasso’s Rose Period coincides with a period of increased personal joy and romance for Picasso. In 1904, Picasso met Fernande Olivier, a French artist and model who became his muse and mistress. Olivier is credited for partially inspiring Picasso’s artistic transition from the cold, somber tone of the Blue Period to the increased warmth and lightness of the Rose Period. The Rose period was an artistic era of the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, and it was the time period in his life where he worked with orange, red, and pinkish tones, which indicated love and romanticism.

I am using this color palette to show the series of emotions the protagonist goes through, with extreme hues and saturations, giving it a more abstract atmosphere. 

Fig. 3 Pablo Picasso, 1905, Acrobate et jeune Arlequin (Acrobat and Young Harlequin)

 

     Fig. 4  Pablo Picasso, 1904, L'acteur (The Actor)

Inspiration

A lot of my inspiration for this short film comes from " Yoh Kamiyama". Yoh Kamiyama is a Japanese musician, singer, and composer from Gifu Prefecture who is affiliated with Ignite Management and Sony Music Associated Records. I've been a huge fan of his since 2018, and I absolutely adore the style of his short films and music videos. He comes up with the most unconventional and unique styles of animating and color schemes in his videos, it is almost impossible to come across one of his videos and not be able to fall in love with the style and composition.

Fig. 5 Yellow by Yoh Kamiyama

Fig. 6 By Yoh Kamiyama

Another huge inspiration when it comes to animation and illustration is “ EVE”. Eve (いぶ), formerly known as Keitora (けいとら) and Kurowa (クロわ), is an utaite known for his very distinctive thin, boyish voice which despite being slightly nasal in tone, is very gentle and nice-flowing. His voice is usually described as being shota-like or "cute", however he can also sing in a more uncharacteristically rough manner, as seen in parts of his cover of "Headphone Actor"

Fig. 7 Eve MV

Some of my other inspiration for the artwork and animatic visuals of this film came from the works and art style of @avogado6_jp.  Also known as アボガド6, is a Japanese artist and illustrator who is known and verified for their conceptual and metaphoric representations. Once again, I have been an avid admirer of their art for a very long time and I've always loved the representation in their works. As my own art style is very colorful and vibrant, I wanted to change my pace a bit to match the more monochromatic and dull shades just like theirs.

Fig. 8 Avogado6 image gallery. 

Idea

Opening art, illustrated by me.

The basic idea of my music video “ At a distance, the sea is blue” is to show the sorrow, bitterness, hopefulness and happiness that a person would go through when he experiences unrequited love. This will be described by a Japanese song called “ abalone on the shore”, which represents a man who jumps in the sea looking for a very rare marine snail but he is not able to find it no matter how hard he tries. This person goes through a series of emotions and palpitations, as his journey of going after a love that he cannot find is highlighted. 

The music I will use in this experimental music video is called “ odd future” by Uverworld, which is also the opening song of season 3 of the infamous “ My hero academia”. I chose this song because of its experimental and electric tone, and I will combine it with voice overs for an abrupt atmosphere. 

Character sketch