Darmada
Who are
Anjunbeats?
Founded in 2000 by the British trance trio Above & Beyond, Anjunabeats started as a platform to release their own music. The name "Anjuna" comes from the famous Anjuna Beach in Goa, India, which was a legendary hotspot for the hippie and electronic music trail in the late 20th century. Over the last two and a half decades, it has evolved into a global powerhouse powerhouse
What was my role?
This track is an intricate take on Mariah Carey's iconic "Emotions," blending her vocals with fresh breakbeats for a moodier, more melancholic feel. For the video, we worked with the artist's original footage to design a visual story about love, connection, and the role of music in a modern, often disconnected world.
The basis for the imagery for this video was the Nokia start-up animation from the 90s. For anyone who owned a mobile phone in the late 1990s or 2000s, the visual of those two hands reaching out to touch, accompanied by the iconic, upbeat Nokia ringtone meant your phone was ready for action.
It was designed to symbolize human connection across generations, distances, and technology barriers. It sent a powerful, emotional message at a time when mobile phones were transitioning from business tools to everyday items.
To begin this brief, there was testing to decide on how far to push the envelope on the distortion and effects used throughout. Below are the first videos made.
After this, it was decided that the best route was to closer emulate the look of the original Nokia start-up screen. Originally it was copied as close to the phone's look as possible but it didn't mesh with other concepts we were discussing bringing into the video. Below is the sequence of adjusting the intro from start to end.
For the bulk of the video, the chosen effect was 'blob tracking'. This is built in touchdesigner through a series of nodes where the software scans the colour values and joins them with a line and box. Going back to the message of "love, connection, and the role of music in a modern, often disconnected world"
