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★★ Stars
COVID 19 shows us the visualisation of the titled song by Adam Dani. This was made as part of the UiTM Mari Berlagu campaign to pass on well wishes, good spirits and mindful messages to healthcare workers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic as well as to the rest of the public as a reminder to stay safe. All entries that I have searched have been very diverse – in both sound and visuals for the videos attached to the tracks – but COVID 19 might just be the most diverse one that I’ve come across.
The entire expanse of this music video is totally consuming and fills all aspects of your sight. It presents itself as what you would think of when I say ‘hypnotic’ or an ‘optical illusion.’ Swirls, parallels, block colour scheme; if this video was shown to me without the song I think I might have squeaked and closed my eyes because there’s no doubt that it made me extremely dizzy, but when you pair the lyrics and further context of the purpose of the music video with the dizziness it quickly begins to balance out quite well. Who would have thought we would be living through a raging pandemic that has been ongoing for longer than we all realise now… do you see what I’m getting at? The whole situation is crazy, so to have visuals that can create a sense of dizziness and repetitive aspects matches brilliantly.
For music videos in general you want there to be a flowing connection between what the ears are met with and what the eyes are met with. You might think this is simply a given but you’d be surprised at how out of place you can find yourself when watching music videos because the interpretation of the song transformed into a video hasn’t worked out. One music video in particular that describes the positives of this further in my perspective would be Slipknot’s The Devil In I. The song is heavy but the events throughout the video move at a beautifully slow and almost prolonged pace; instead of the video moving with the same pace as the song, the flowing connection is instead seen through the gruesomeness of the events that occur. That is a perfect balance. Bands like Cannibal Corpse aren’t going to have calm music videos, the whole universe would be confused by that, and the same goes for COVID 19 (yes, I deliberately used the widest contrast I could possibly think of there.) The electronic beats used in the song sync up with the dizzying visuals and manage to create a stable footing between both powers of sound and imagery for the duration of the video.
The most praiseworthy part of Adam Dani’s submission COVID 19 is how the video was actually made in the first place, helping me conclude this review in a sense that everything comes full circle from start to finish. Very much like COVID… please wear a mask. Anyway, the song itself was composed and written within an hour before production and mixing began, and was made entirely using a smartphone and a BM500 mic. The quality that the end product has from just these is amazing. The music video was then made with five royalty footage pieces and stock images - seriously, how awesome is that?! To produce something so creative with so little will always be an impressive feat.
Watch COVID 19 by Adam Dani here.
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