Created to coincide with the release of Muto’s debut EP Arcane, Visitor filmmaking partners George Thomson and Lukas Schrank take a temporal leap into a parallel universe in which a couple desperately try to cross the void which separates them in music video Tessellating. Below, George and Lukas tell us why they were drawn to create a future world more in keeping with our present than the typical sci-fi epics of Hollywood.
The video tells the story of two people lost in different realities, as they try to find their way back each other. Our focus is always to find original and enigmatic ways to tell stories – in this case, we’re taking a classic love story, and the fairly well-trodden sci-fi motif of the parallel universe, but reframing them in more of an indie-film context. In our own near-future vision, obscure industrial landscapes, desolate motels, and empty Vietnamese restaurants take the place of the Hollywood sci-fi archetypes of crystalline megacities and dystopian slums.
After finishing a fairly large scale short film with a crew size and production scale worthy of a feature film, we were keen to go back to basics with this video, concentrating our efforts on working with two incredible actors (Senie Priti and Lucas Pittaway) and a very small, talented crew.
Our focus is always to find original and enigmatic ways to tell stories.
We shot in the outskirts of Melbourne, Australia, relying heavily on the diverse and often placeless landscapes it offers to create a subtle vision of a parallel reality. Cinematographer David Rusanow managed to work with the tiny budget and tight timeframe to deliver something cinematic, using vintage Baltar lenses and focusing on using practical and often natural light to give the piece a consistent look.
As with the all of our work, we hope that the piece asks questions of the audience and has a level of ambiguity that suggests something greater and more mysterious lurking beyond the boundaries of the frame…
