Have you ever wondered how the world would be if inanimate objects like mops or broomsticks came to life? Probably not. It’s not like we have enough time to waste.
But then, we’ve seen broomsticks come to life before, in Disney’s famed Sorcerer’s Apprentice from Fantasia. And now, indie singer-songwriter Dhruv Visvanath has brought mops to life in a warm, endearing music video for his single Wild (video above).
The 26-year-old musician told Scroll.in that Wild was a search for his own innocence. “I always thought of the song as the moment my childhood ended without my knowing it,” he said. He asked the crew at Mosambi Juice Productions to work with the same premise, and ultimately it was Tanvi Gandhi, the director of the video, who came up with the idea of a world filled with mops, where they lead lives just like regular people from different facets of society.
“Having a mop as a character compels anyone watching the video to ask questions. ‘Why them?’ ‘Am I one of those mops?’” said Visvanath. “Ultimately, the video echoes the sentiments of the song – living in our busy, noisy, chaotic lives, we all need to give ourselves the opportunities to look at our innocence in our childhood, and maybe escape to a better time.”
The animated mops try to offer an unusual perspective on human life by removing the human from the storyline. Thus, by becoming the “other”, the mops serve as a reflection of human society and question of what it means to ultimately even be “human” or a member of the world.
Animating the mops and bringing them to life was a challenge, though. Visvanath explained in detail how the crew created a special contraption which allowed the mops to move, rotate and bend – but that was only part of the problem. “Catching the mops on camera was a challenge, too, because making the movement of the mops seem deliberate was difficult,” said Visvanath. “On top of that, making unique hairstyles and, of course, making the mops blink was such an inspiring choice – because it was extremely important to make them seem human.”
Wild is part of Visvanath’s album The Lost Cause, which is slated for release on April 19.
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