1. The Wombats – ‘Let’s Dance to Joy Division’
Jasmine Blackborow
This video will be a vibrant and fantastical coming-of-age story, filled with juxtapositional imagery, retro visuals and colourful
celebrations, all underpinned by an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ style surrealism.
I want to make a narrative driven video, however a party/performance sequence would dominate the last 2/3 of the film. The
narrative follows a young boy who has outgrown childhood. At the start he seems bored, stifled and unsettled, however, after
following some simple advice (‘let’s dance to Joy Division!’) he is left at the close of the video filled with the hope, the
confusions and the celebrations that his teenage years will bring.
“I’m back in Liverpool and everything seems the same, but I worked something out last night
that changed this little boy’s brain, a small piece of advice that took 22 years”
A Joy Division cassette is put into a tape player. It rests on a pillow, propped up next to a young boy in bed. Shot in black and white, the
location is a child’s room, the mise-en-scene is early 80’s retro. By the 1st chorus the boy has had a realisation. There is an ECU of his
eyes opening wide, followed by a rushed and choppy sequence as the boy dances to Joy Division. He completely rocks out and trashes
his room.
“…take a taxi to the darker side of town, that’s where we’ll
be, and we will wait for you and lead you through the dance
floor”
The boy is now standing in a duskily lit street, with his two friends/band mates on
either side. A long arc shot semi-circles around them as they stand totally still. A
bright yellow rope appears which the boys follow, the rope serves to lead the boys
As the boys open the door they are hit with an overwhelming sense of and celebratestepping out of the wardrobe and intosurroundings.
like a yellow-brick road; a bright light in the dreary black and white Narnia. The
“We’ll ask for Joy Division discovery. It’s like the irony,
video on the other side of the door is now saturated in colour. The side street is alleyways, people, and concrete stairwells, trying to catch up with
They run down dark filled with up winding everyone is dancing, rocking out,
The video ends with the boy finally making this metaphorical chase the but we’re so happy” up costumes to follows sense of
everything is going wrong rope. The shots will be close years. The boy give a the
celebrating and happy. The crowd are older than the boys, and transition from his childhooddressed in wildand pacey with funny hats, urgency,
between 16 and 25, and are all to teenage
yellow rope once more,camera at into the crowd. He divesandweaving in between the crowd, tilting up bodies, zooming into faces. I
glasses, facepaints…The this time this point is very intrusive, to suggest they are looking for something. their shoulders and crowd
into the crowd, dancing around, climbing onto
envisage the crowd leads the boy to a hugetear us apart I thewhich he cure for a faces, dancing, head banging, posing, clapping,
surfing. The rope members shouting and singing directly into found a then throws all over the crowd (by sitting on someones’s
“Let the love bucket/box of confetti, camera, pulling funny broken heart”
shoulders) and they continue to dance together amongst the colourful chaos.
laughing...