Fiche de Lecture #4 : Connan Mockasin

6 février 2011

« IT’S CHOADE MY DEAR » DE CONNAN MOCKASIN

“We were continually attacked by an army of water rats during filming, rather life threatening and disruptive. The ‘Rat Emperor’ we managed to film & decided to include in the video (you can see him in the opening sequences). Also in the closing sequence with the flowers falling down onto Connan, you can see a snippet of my father dropping them from a cherry picker …. again at the last moment I decided to include this footage in the final edit as I thought it was quite funny”. Sam Handley

Director :

Sam Edward Handley (Musician, Video Maker & Kite Flyer).

Alternative title to the video :

“Operation SNAT”

Location :

The Lagoon by Connan’s home in Te Awanga – a sleepy little seaside village in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand.

Date of shooting :

One day in Janruary 2010.

1- Le point de vue du réalisateur :

Genre :

« Genre ? Interesting question… Without sounding pretentious I would hope it had an Art House quality ».

Theme :

« I have some very vivid memories of my childhood. One thing I used to enjoy doing was lying on the ground and pretending the whole world was on its side. In our family home you would have to scale all along the hall way to the lounge, jump over to the sofa and be careful not to fall down into the fireplace (ha) and try and make your way to the kitchen.

Just by lying on your side you could create this whole other world and that was the concept I wanted to apply to a music video ».

Theory :

« It was a concept I had been thinking about using for a very long time… when Connan sent me the song i knew that was the one ».

Structure :

« Basically, a slow reveal of the optical illusion over the course of the video…. Starting with closeup shots of Connan & eventually pulling out to reveal a very wide shot…(trying to keep it simple). I also wanted to incorporate another dynamic into the video, a mysterious character. Connan and I decided on the Snat (one of Connan’s imaginary characters) who you see rowing the boat and at the end feeding the ducks… again also playing on the optical illusion ».

2- Le Point de vue de Connan Mockasin :

« While making the video, the rat emperor (the rat in the opening scenes) swam under me and sniffed my shoulder which made it hard for me to finish the filming because i have a phobia of rats. So we had people distracting the rats with white bread which was originally to distract the ducks and geese.

This was the forth video Sam has made for me. I feel comfortable when involved with a project with Sam because he has a strange but simple imagination, he’s good with low budgets and I’ve never seen him ever appear stressed. Sam was with me documenting my first six weeks in London when we were homeless five years ago which was a real low point of my life. But he made me feel calm about it all ».

ShareThis