LOVEBIRDS

During quarantine, my father gave me the opportunity to make the visuals for one of his song. This project is about the loneliness and pain of being far from our loved ones. It explores a dystopian society where everyone is captive and separated.

THE IDEA

Lovebirds is first of all a love song that tells the story of a man kept away from the woman he loves. It illustrates true loneliness, the consequences of physical and mental isolation. The man is trapped in a Brutalist structure which represent a world he doesn’t believe in anymore, a world lacking purpose. While he’s singing for a way out of his prison, the visuals depict metaphorically the drifts of our modern society.

**LYRICS**

The song is divided in six parts, six unique visual chapters.
**0. TITLES**
**1. APART**
**2. TIME**
**3. FREE**
**4. HOPE**
**5. VISION**

**THE MACHINE**

Controlling everything through its cables, the Machine represents the evil core of our society. Its influence, showing the hopeless situation of the main character, is represented by the red color in several shots.

**THE CELL**

The first chapter takes place in a Brutalist structure which depicts the cold and hard reality of isolation.
This shot showcases the cell in which the character spent countless days. It features relays for the machine and a lot of chalk drawings that show us the mental health of the prisoner.

**TIME**

Time is a recurrent theme in *Lovebirds* that I wanted to showcase through abstract circular patterns. The idea behind the clock shot was to make this abstraction part of the Brutalist facility in which the character is captive.

**THE CITY**

The city part was really essential to the shortfilm as it extends the prison of the protagonist to everyone. The color scheme completely changes, the camera movements are smooth and you travel great distances. You are finally free of the prison and fly away like a bird.
Nonetheless, something is not quite right. You slowly realize you’re in another prison, a seamless city full of people trapped in their own cell, wired by the Machine.

**DREAM BOXES**

This shot was a metaphorical transition between the city and the Hope chapter where the character is wondering if he’s dreaming as he sees white wings take him away. The vegetation is a symbol that takes all its sense in the next chapter.
The idea here was to represent the main character amongst others. He’s finally free from his pain but the others are still under the influence of the Machine.

**HOPE**

The hope chapter revisits the same places as before but everything has changed. The Machine is broken, vegetation has grown and the mood is completely different. We don’t know what’s real or not anymore.
This shot marks the transition from an aspect ratio of 2:40:1 to 1:85:1. What motivated this change was the feeling of freedom I wanted to convey. The spectator is not locked between 2 black bars anymore, the entire screen is used to display the whole picture.

marketing

Lovebirds was such meaningful to us that we wanted the project to be part of a whole. To do so, we produced a poster, visuals for social networks and a teaser with an exclusive soundtrack as we didn’t want to reveal too much of the song.

We decided to release the project on march 12th, the one year anniversary of the lock-down in Belgium.

To do things right, we created Harmonized Pictures, a fictive company that embodies our collaboration. My father’s making music, I’m making visuals and every project features a title sequence with sound design.

THE TEASER

THE POSTER

The idea behind the poster was to contrast the lovely title with the horrific visual. As we didn’t plan to print it, I wanted to make the visual dirty as if it had been displayed for a long time in the street.