It can seem straightforward to illustrate abstract music with abstract visuals, but it can be done in so many ways.
A rather unique approach would be to shoot chemical reactions with a macro lens, and that’s exactly what Roman Hill did for the music video of Thomas Vanz’s song named Lucid.
Long story short (there are actually things to unfold, more on these afterwards), let’s watch the video.
I encourage you to put it on fullscreen, with decent speakers or headphones, and to let yourself immerse into this piece for 3:16 minutes of your life you won’t regret.
Symbiosis
Objectively, this is a nice little piano track, and the shots are quite beautiful and graphical.
But what I think is particularly interesting here, is how they work together so well :
From start to end, everything feels intimately tied : fluids moving in sync with flows of notes, the suspended melody appearing mid track when colored holes grow into the matter as the beat settles on, the pauses, the final structured form collapsing into a single held note, …
Instead of being just a succession of beauty shots over random notes, we have here a very cohesive audiovisual piece, carried by a near-perfect edit.
It feels like watching the story of a universe unfolding in front of our eyes, and that was actually the intention, which means this is good art direction.
Quoting Thomaz Vanz :
“For this third film, my friend and mentor Roman Hill has crafted a visual representation of the birth of a cell on a microscopic scale. Through his creative vision, he brings to life the intricate process of cellular formation, offering a captivating glimpse into the wonders of life at its smallest level.”
I love that kind of strong audiovisual bond and that’s what I notably want to explore with Resonant Form.
There is this magical feeling at some point where it’s hard to tell if the visuals seem created by the music, or if the music seems created by the visuals.
Which can lead to a question : which actually starts first ?
For music videos the visuals are obviously created afterwards but in many audiovisual works it’s not the case, it’s an interesting subject I’ll tackle in a future post.
Ok but how ?
These beautiful visuals were crafted in a rather particular way.
Roman Hill is a French & American artist and filmmaker, and his specialty is to create these kinds of abstract organic visuals derived from physical phenomena and chemical reactions.
Inside his studio, he shoots these microscopic materials and natural processes with high end camera gear, up to a resolution of 12K and 1000 frames per second enabling him to obtain very detailed and closeup images in extreme slow motion.
(Sorry Apple, even your iPhone 20 won’t be able to do that).
There isn’t much information about his process, but for a similar kind of film he explained that he shot the images in about 15 minutes and had then many weeks of post production, notably involving complex color grading.
He apparently likes to keep his chemical reactions recipes secret and I guess he spent years perfecting them.
Even if he uses sophisticated equipment, this is a very analog process in itself, and with an organic beauty and complexity that no computer imagery could reproduce.
Here is a nice short video portrait of him glimpsing inside his work :
With his unique style, Roman created critically acclaimed films and his work has been showcased in prestigious immersive exhibitions, as well as being used by iconic brands.
He also was commissioned by many famous artists to work on their music videos, notably Metallica, Liam Gallagher and Coldplay.
But wait, there’s more !
I intended this post to be short, but as I made some research while writing, I myself felt diving into an expanding universe :
Thomas Vanz is actually at first a film director, also working in the same niche using practical effects, pigments, ink and chemical reactions !
He also did some art films, immersive exhibitions, music videos and commercials
He is a very good friend of Roman Hill, and they worked together on many projects, he actually did the music on Roman’s most famous piece called “As Above”.
In, fact “Lucid” is one of the five films they did together to illustrate Thomas’ most powerful songs from his album.
What an interesting duo !
If you enjoy their approach I invite you to look at their works and websites linked below.
As beautiful as the other films are, “Lucid” is still my favorite, because of that unique audiovisual symbiosis. What about you ?
Credits
Artists :
Thomas Vanz → https://www.thomasvanz.com
Roman Hill → https://www.romanhill.fr
Images : © Roman Hill & Thomas Vanz
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