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New Music Video uses Science Fiction Film Footage

22 February 2012

NEW MUSIC VIDEO FROM JASCHA

MASHES UP CLASSIC SCIENCE-FICTION FILMS

February 21, 2012 — Today San Francisco songwriter Jascha releases a music video telling the story of a lonely artificial intelligence whose efforts to reach out to its human creators ends in tragedy. 

The song, "Limited," is the first single on Jascha's album The Future Limited, which ventures into the realms of science-fiction and synth-pop. To make the music video, filmmaker John Pavlus used scenes of robots and computers in five classic science fiction films, including 2001, Robocop, and Tron. 

"I've been curious for a while about whether I could re-edit images, shots and scenes from well-known movies to tell different stories from the ones I borrowed them from," Pavlus said. "The music video for Jascha's ‘Limited’ seemed like a great opportunity to experiment with this approach, since the song instantly suggested to me a science-fiction short story — and I didn't have the time to create sci-fi production value from scratch." 

"It also seemed like a fun challenge to take images that have acquired so much ‘baggage’ over the years -- like the glowering cyclops eye of HAL from 2001, which has become visual shorthand for ‘evil machine’ -- and try to attach completely opposite emotional associations to them," said Pavlus. "What if something like HAL wasn't evil at all, but just misunderstood in its intentions, like a puppy who plays too rough with its owner? That's exactly the image that Jascha's plaintive refrain put into my head."

"Remixing material from five very different films creates a necessarily impressionistic approach to telling a story, so maybe the story this video tells in your head isn't the same one that it tells in mine,” Pavlus added.” Either way I hope it's a good one."

“The song is something of a Pinocchio story, about a machine that wants to be a real human being,” said Hoffman. “John's omnivorous visual approach seemed a perfect match.”

  Jascha has  known for imaginative videos: an animated video directed by Benjamin Ahr Harrison, went viral after being posted on Boing Boing and The Atlantic last summer.

  • The music video “Limited” will go live on YouTube on Tuesday, February 21.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhYDn1QWs-Q

Jascha Hoffman is a songwriter and science journalist in San Francisco. His debut album A Cure for Sleep has been praised for its "deceptively simple, deeply weird pop songs” that earned him comparisons to Sufjan Stevens, Magnetic Fields and “Leonard Cohen without the attitude.” Jascha’s debut album A Cure for Sleep was drawn from his dreams. His second album, The Future Limited ventures into the realms of science fiction and synth-pop.

John Pavlus is an award-winning filmmaker focusing on science, tech, and design topics. He creates original short films, documentaries, and branded content for organizations including NPR, Autodesk, Nature Publishing Group, and The New York Times Magazine through his production company, Small Mammal. He also writes for publications including Scientific American, Technology Review, Wired, and Fast Company.


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