On The Run Again - Music Video

About

On The Run Again is a visual and conceptual non-linear story about being lost and on the run from our inner demons. A love allegory about a distance that can occur within oneself and between two people in a relationship that want to find back. When I started brainstorming the project, the artist quickly told me about his love for Depeche Mode, Blade Runner, Retrowave music, the 80s and the Hollywood film 'Drive'. The process of conceptualising this love allegory started. How do we show someone being on the run without actually showing a girl constantly running? We run from ourselves, from others, from thoughts and feelings, from tough situations and relationships to others. I landed on a sci-fi world inspired by Blade Runner and Drive that could carry the themes. The aim was for each scene to symbolise some sort of flight.

Storyboarding

During brainstorming I sat with bits and pieces and a few obscure images in my head. After a while it evolved to scenes that each symbolised some phase of being on the run. Instead of writing a script first, I took some of the keywords from my brainstorming and started sketching conceptual storyboards based on the images in my head. Some of the sketches were tossed away and some I continued to develop. After a while, they turned into something more unified which became essential for me when communicating set design, make-up, costumes, lighting and cinematography to all head of departments.

Set Design

After outlining some sort of loose story based on the storyboard sketches, I wrote a script. And as soon as I had a script I was happy about, I started breaking down the script and sketching floor-plans of how the characters would move and how the rooms would be constructed. Together with my art director, Tobias Westerberg, we designed each room carefully while thinking about how we could integrate set design and lighting.

Previsualizing

We already knew the size of our studio. It wasn't a big room. It had a challenging low ceiling with few possibilities to attach lamps. We had designed 6 completely different sets and each required the complete space of the studio. There wasn't much storing space for the sets we didn't use, so we had to come up with a way to work fast, dynamic and efficiently. Therefore, we decided to prep all the sets in the studio 4 days before the shoot and leave them ready. Together with my art director, Tobias Westerberg we made a system where we could drop down parts of the set from the ceiling, slide in a wall from the side and tear apart the scenography we knew we would never use again. When we were happy about the sketches, I took the sketches to Adobe Illustrator and started previsualizing all the sets. Then I took the illustrations and animated them in After Effects. The animation became key when communicating the workflow to the other departments.

Production

The music video was shot over the course of 2,5 days. Mostly in studio, but also on two outdoor locations in April 2022. The studio days were intense and the outdoor locations freezing cold. In the studio, the art department would build the first scene, then the light department would light it, we would shoot it, and then the art department would go on with building the next scene. In total, 33 people including cast and crew were involved with the project. Below is a selection of behind the scenes stills from the production and stills from the actual music video.