Violet Hum - The Arthur Brothers - Official Music Video

Violet Hum - Music Video for the Arthur Brothers,
released 01.03.2019
Director: Tribambuka (Anastasia Beltyukova)
Animator: Tribambuka (Anastasia Beltyukova)
Camera: Boris Vajda
Choreography: Kirill Burlov

Starring:
Matt Arthur as Matt Arthur
Danny Arthur as Danny Arthur
Kirill Burlov as The Trickster
J. C. Wright as The Wizard
Natasha Pshenichnaya as Alice

Mentors: Litza Jantz, John Horabin
City Lit Animation Course 2018

Excerpt From public domain footage used in the film: 
Sunset Range (1935) by Ray McCarey
The Magic Roses (1906) by Segundo Chomón
International Contest for the heavyweight Championship: Squires vs. Burns, July 4,1907, Miles Bros
Dating: Dos And Don'ts (1949) by Coronet Instructional Films

AWARDS:
Barcelona International Film Festival 2019,
Barcelona, Spain, Gold Lion Award
Feel The Reel International Film Festival 2018,
Glasgow, UK, Best Music Video
ReAnima 2018, Norway, Best Music Video:
London International Student Film Festival 2018,
London, UK, Best Music Video.
San Jose International Film Awards 2019, Costa Rica, Best Video Clip
Hollywood Independent Filmmakers Awards and Festival 2018, USA, Honorable Mention
International Music Video Awards, Best Animated Music Video, 2020, UK

Official Selection:
Rome Independent Prisma Films Awards 2018, Italy
Short To The Point 2018, Romania
Moscow Shorts International Film Festival July 2018, Russia
London Shorts Series Festival 2018, UK
Jelly International Film Festival 2018, Los Angeles, USA
Toronto Vanguard 2018, Canada
Lift Off Global Network London 2018, UK
Porto Femme International Film Festival 2019, Portugal
Music Shorts Film Festival 2019, Missoula, USA

The song “Violet Hum” is probably the most eccentric track on the Arthur Brothers’ debut album. It is quite a collage of styles and states of mind, so it was a great chance for me as a director and animation artist to mix different techniques and to try out different styles. The brothers are thrown into different realms, from whimsical worlds of giant goddesses or a police state residing on a back of a grumpy fish to messy abstract subconscious states of mind, where chaos and cosmos collide. And it’s not really clear if they are actually travelling, or is it a desired and feared adventure of the discovery of self, or they are just trapped in some bardo or limbo. There’s a trickster distracting or guiding them, there’s a wizard overseeing their journey, there’s dangers and temptations on the way, and it’s not even clear what kind of treasure they are looking for - they just answer their inner call and see where the journey takes them.

The song is very quirky and extravagant, with a lot of changes of pace and style, a bit of a collage - which gave me great creative freedom and a chance to explore all the techniques I wanted, and to experiment with styles and materials. I used stop motion to shoot all the hand-printed and hand-painted textures and tons of my sketchbooks to create mad hectic chaotic texture movements, dropped liquid watercolours on wet paper (same watercolour that Heinz Edelmann used to create Yellow Submarine), tried a bit of rotoscoping, vector animation in Adobe Animate and some After Effects magic, frame by frame animation in Photoshop, did some live shooting with a green screen and painted over it, and what not. The style deliberately refers to psychedelic sixties a bit, as you can hear those influences in music too. But hopefully both the band and me managed to create something new rooted in that inspiration.

My film doesn’t have a clear narrative structure, it’s more like a dream state, bardo, travelling between different realms of one's subconscious - but generally it has links to Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s path - a call from the unknown (here - from the depths of one’s psyche), answering this call and going on a weird and wonderful adventure, being consumed by a whale, which represents transportation to a different realm and a symbolic death, meeting goddesses and monsters on the way, being distracted (or guided?) by a trickster and overseen by a wizard, and in the end the reality of it all is questioned by seeing a girl closing the box. So it’s kind of a mythical Odyssey without clear answers - the journey continues!

“A true original! Wow! ”
— JELLY FILM FESTIVAL

“Violet Hum is one experimental animated music video that tackles not only the depths of the human emotions, but also the depths of experimentalism in terms of cinematography.”
— FEEL THE REEL INTERNATIONAL
FILM FESTIVAL

“This is an exquisitely captivating video, kooky and wonderful just like the song it’s paired with.”
— FUZZY LOGIC