Love Song: Asymmetry and Wanderlust
So it actually is making of this current userpic that caused me to look into the image inconsistencies in the Love Song MV.
For the uninitiated, this is the latest MV by Korean group Big Bang.
The following piece will try to dissect some images in the MV, hopefully to support a theory of mine about the story behind the MV. Now, the lyrics of the song have a meaning of their own, available here per a lovely translation of GD's handwritten notes on the lyrics. It's very much worth a read. Basically, it's about the death of a lover and the singer's wish to join the woman in the netherworld.
The point I set to prove here is that the images are flipped after a certain point, and there is a reason to do so besides them running out of set (for the USD200,000 budget, I could hardly think they would not be able to build a big enough set) or just for fun, it is to convey a deeper message of the protagonist in the story.
Warning: this is not the kind of entry for people who want to say, "Hey, obsessive much? Lighten up, it's just effing K-pop!"
With that out of the way, let's begin with the first shot of the MV.
Delicious, delicious Tabi in a suit. *drools*
I mean, let's look at the clothing for this MV, shall we. For 'Love Song', Big Bang has forgone (most of) their usual psychadelic colours and flashy fashion, but opted for understated black suits. This is for three reasons, in my opinion.
1) To convey a sense that they have grown up and is returning as men.
2) As appropriate attire at the death of their lover. A mourning colour, a funereal atmosphere.
3) Most importantly, to put EMPHASIS on the accessories that they are wearing, because they provide important clues for us.
All of them are wearing, as we will soon see, silver accessories. Not just that, they are wearing them extremely asymmetrically. Nearly all of their accessories are on their left hand side (which is our right, for the left-right impaired of our audience). I'd wager a guess that it's on the left side because that's the side of the heart, but maybe that's reading too much into it, even for me.
Anyway, here, Tabi is wearing two safety pins on his left lapel. he is also wearing a silver watch on his left hand, which is visible in other screen-shots.
One more thing to note in this picture is that there is a row of footprints leading up to where Tabi is, on the left side of the screen, it is a straight row of many many footprints, winding back and forth forever into the wilderness, suggesting that they have wandered for quite some time now.
Now GD and Dae come into the scene. Dae is the only one without a pin on his left lapel, but he has his silver chain on his left side, and patterns on his left cuff and a ring on his left hand.
GD has a ton of rings on left wrist and only a string on his right, and of course, also a pin on his left lapel and an earring on his left ear . Also, notice the direction GD's belt buckle is towards, one thing that cannot be changed by just switching the jewelery from left to right.
Although it was hard to get clear captures, it is obvious from these two caps that:
Bae has a cross on his left lapel.
Ri has a crown on his left lapel, and also is wearing a bracelet on his left hand, AND a black silk handkerchief out of his left back pocket (which will be clearer in group shots).
All of it is deliberately asymmetrical, the more to make it obvious when it is flipped. Because if they just wore completely symmetrical suits, then no one would notice a flipped image, right? Which further goes on to prove that the flipped image isn't some trick to disguise their technical difficulties, but planned from the beginning as part of the message of the MV.
Pardon my superb paint skillz. A group shot before the flip. Everyone's lapels are still in the right direction, and you can see Ri's silk handkerchief on the left as well.
And then we go to Tabi.
Lapel pin in place, watch in place. All on the left.
And then we pan up into the sky. For those who ask if this is truly a one-shot MV (which I believe is beside the point, because the point is they TRIED to create a one-shot effect, and that is enough), I would have to answer a resolute NO.
There are a few glaring things that point to differences before and after the flip/cut (which, yes, occurs during the pan to the sky), like a few set pieces have moved (including the door on the side of the burning truck) and A COMPLETE CAR DISAPPEARING (I suppose that is the car that is dropped later on in the end).
I would have loved for it to be one-shot but, no, it is not. I think it is possible to do it in one shot, but they didn't do so because of some technical difficulties.
Anyway, moving on.
When we pan back down from the sky, the images are all flipped.
First, GD's rings are now all on the right wrist, and his belt buckle is also facing right.
The truck in the background is part of the central conceit of this MV. Bae actually walked past this same truck in the middle of the MV, but he walked it in a different direction.
This is a screencap before the flip, of the other side of the truck, which though it looks very similar, has no construction signs or tires in front of it.
If they didn't flip the image, GD would be walking in the opposite direction (from the left of the screen to the right of the screen) and that would go against the whole MV, which actually involves a constant fluid movement from right to left. By the way, it is universally acknowledged that movement from the left to right of the screen indicates normalcy, while from RIGHT TO LEFT indicates abnormalcy. This may be another clue that the whole MV occurs in an abnormal/psychological state, rather than in reality.
Because the movement seems to be constantly moving right to left, when we first watch the MV, it is easy to we think that they are walking in one direction instead of around and around the set. But they are.
Compare these two screencaps (top one is before flip, bottom one is after flip):
The black rectangular sign on the first cap is on the left, but in the second cap, it is on the right. Also the car has moved from left to right. This is proof that the image has been flipped.
So here they are, walking out of the same entrance that they came through in the beginning of the MV, essentially making a loop around the set. Then just when they think they have exited the wreckage, a car drops right in front of them, causing another piece of chaos right in front. You can notice that most of their accessories are on the "wrong" side -- their right in this final screencap.
So why did they subtly try to hide the fact that they are just looping around the set. Because that is how our mind works, we encounter a disaster (be it in love or otherwise), we try to travel through it and escape it, but really we are just wandering around it. again and again.
In 'Love Song', the protagonist wants to escape from the pains of his lover's death, maybe even through suicide. In the MV, I think they are wandering through a dreamscape of the wreckage that killed his lover, unable to leave it. Even when he is given the illusion of walking through the wreckage, it is only created in his own mind, everything is warped and on the wrong side as he walks around and around in the same wreckage, back into the wilderness of his heart, only to have the disaster happening again in front of his eyes.
Notice that GD is the only one looking at the explosion, perhaps because the story was penned by him..
Anyway, as usual, all this time may have been better spent bettering my grades at school, but otherwise, I have been very happy to rewatch 'Love Song' for the fiftieth time, healthily contributing to its 2.5 million views.
Oh, and draw this map of the 'Love Song' set and the camera moves.
The camera starts from top right corner and follows the brown line. A marks the spot of the camera panning up and the camera cut/flip. So yes, technically, it could totally be done as a one-shot.
Postscript Edit - The following briliiant analysis is provided by the venerable blackbrocade :
I guess another way of interpreting the way the images were flipped, is that the protagonists have already "crossed over" and are looking at the world through the looking-glass (mirror, to those who don't read Lewis Carroll). In their psychological states of both pain and yearning to join thier lover, they are seeing death as a happy ending, and they could now go and find their lover "on the other side". As they walk a full circle and come to the point of both the beginning and end of life (science geeks may want to refer to the word "quantum singularity"), they are able to look at their ruined lives (the falling carwreck) in a detached and uncaring way.
If you'll allow me to tootle my own horn a bit, it's curious that I thought of the word singularity, since theory posits that the singularity is the beiginning of the Big Bang that created the universe...
Big Bang. Get it? XDD
You know, when they said that I was going to go mad for Big Bang, I didn't know they meant, like, literally.
It's too late for me now, SAVES THYSELVES!!!
For the uninitiated, this is the latest MV by Korean group Big Bang.
Click to viewThe following piece will try to dissect some images in the MV, hopefully to support a theory of mine about the story behind the MV. Now, the lyrics of the song have a meaning of their own, available here per a lovely translation of GD's handwritten notes on the lyrics. It's very much worth a read. Basically, it's about the death of a lover and the singer's wish to join the woman in the netherworld.
The point I set to prove here is that the images are flipped after a certain point, and there is a reason to do so besides them running out of set (for the USD200,000 budget, I could hardly think they would not be able to build a big enough set) or just for fun, it is to convey a deeper message of the protagonist in the story.
Warning: this is not the kind of entry for people who want to say, "Hey, obsessive much? Lighten up, it's just effing K-pop!"
With that out of the way, let's begin with the first shot of the MV.
Delicious, delicious Tabi in a suit. *drools*
I mean, let's look at the clothing for this MV, shall we. For 'Love Song', Big Bang has forgone (most of) their usual psychadelic colours and flashy fashion, but opted for understated black suits. This is for three reasons, in my opinion.
1) To convey a sense that they have grown up and is returning as men.
2) As appropriate attire at the death of their lover. A mourning colour, a funereal atmosphere.
3) Most importantly, to put EMPHASIS on the accessories that they are wearing, because they provide important clues for us.
All of them are wearing, as we will soon see, silver accessories. Not just that, they are wearing them extremely asymmetrically. Nearly all of their accessories are on their left hand side (which is our right, for the left-right impaired of our audience). I'd wager a guess that it's on the left side because that's the side of the heart, but maybe that's reading too much into it, even for me.
Anyway, here, Tabi is wearing two safety pins on his left lapel. he is also wearing a silver watch on his left hand, which is visible in other screen-shots.
One more thing to note in this picture is that there is a row of footprints leading up to where Tabi is, on the left side of the screen, it is a straight row of many many footprints, winding back and forth forever into the wilderness, suggesting that they have wandered for quite some time now.
Now GD and Dae come into the scene. Dae is the only one without a pin on his left lapel, but he has his silver chain on his left side, and patterns on his left cuff and a ring on his left hand.
GD has a ton of rings on left wrist and only a string on his right, and of course, also a pin on his left lapel and an earring on his left ear . Also, notice the direction GD's belt buckle is towards, one thing that cannot be changed by just switching the jewelery from left to right.
Although it was hard to get clear captures, it is obvious from these two caps that:
Bae has a cross on his left lapel.
Ri has a crown on his left lapel, and also is wearing a bracelet on his left hand, AND a black silk handkerchief out of his left back pocket (which will be clearer in group shots).
All of it is deliberately asymmetrical, the more to make it obvious when it is flipped. Because if they just wore completely symmetrical suits, then no one would notice a flipped image, right? Which further goes on to prove that the flipped image isn't some trick to disguise their technical difficulties, but planned from the beginning as part of the message of the MV.
Pardon my superb paint skillz. A group shot before the flip. Everyone's lapels are still in the right direction, and you can see Ri's silk handkerchief on the left as well.
And then we go to Tabi.
Lapel pin in place, watch in place. All on the left.
And then we pan up into the sky. For those who ask if this is truly a one-shot MV (which I believe is beside the point, because the point is they TRIED to create a one-shot effect, and that is enough), I would have to answer a resolute NO.
There are a few glaring things that point to differences before and after the flip/cut (which, yes, occurs during the pan to the sky), like a few set pieces have moved (including the door on the side of the burning truck) and A COMPLETE CAR DISAPPEARING (I suppose that is the car that is dropped later on in the end).
I would have loved for it to be one-shot but, no, it is not. I think it is possible to do it in one shot, but they didn't do so because of some technical difficulties.
Anyway, moving on.
When we pan back down from the sky, the images are all flipped.
First, GD's rings are now all on the right wrist, and his belt buckle is also facing right.
The truck in the background is part of the central conceit of this MV. Bae actually walked past this same truck in the middle of the MV, but he walked it in a different direction.
This is a screencap before the flip, of the other side of the truck, which though it looks very similar, has no construction signs or tires in front of it.
If they didn't flip the image, GD would be walking in the opposite direction (from the left of the screen to the right of the screen) and that would go against the whole MV, which actually involves a constant fluid movement from right to left. By the way, it is universally acknowledged that movement from the left to right of the screen indicates normalcy, while from RIGHT TO LEFT indicates abnormalcy. This may be another clue that the whole MV occurs in an abnormal/psychological state, rather than in reality.
Because the movement seems to be constantly moving right to left, when we first watch the MV, it is easy to we think that they are walking in one direction instead of around and around the set. But they are.
Compare these two screencaps (top one is before flip, bottom one is after flip):
The black rectangular sign on the first cap is on the left, but in the second cap, it is on the right. Also the car has moved from left to right. This is proof that the image has been flipped.
So here they are, walking out of the same entrance that they came through in the beginning of the MV, essentially making a loop around the set. Then just when they think they have exited the wreckage, a car drops right in front of them, causing another piece of chaos right in front. You can notice that most of their accessories are on the "wrong" side -- their right in this final screencap.
So why did they subtly try to hide the fact that they are just looping around the set. Because that is how our mind works, we encounter a disaster (be it in love or otherwise), we try to travel through it and escape it, but really we are just wandering around it. again and again.
In 'Love Song', the protagonist wants to escape from the pains of his lover's death, maybe even through suicide. In the MV, I think they are wandering through a dreamscape of the wreckage that killed his lover, unable to leave it. Even when he is given the illusion of walking through the wreckage, it is only created in his own mind, everything is warped and on the wrong side as he walks around and around in the same wreckage, back into the wilderness of his heart, only to have the disaster happening again in front of his eyes.
Notice that GD is the only one looking at the explosion, perhaps because the story was penned by him..
Anyway, as usual, all this time may have been better spent bettering my grades at school, but otherwise, I have been very happy to rewatch 'Love Song' for the fiftieth time, healthily contributing to its 2.5 million views.
Oh, and draw this map of the 'Love Song' set and the camera moves.
The camera starts from top right corner and follows the brown line. A marks the spot of the camera panning up and the camera cut/flip. So yes, technically, it could totally be done as a one-shot.
Postscript Edit - The following briliiant analysis is provided by the venerable blackbrocade :
I guess another way of interpreting the way the images were flipped, is that the protagonists have already "crossed over" and are looking at the world through the looking-glass (mirror, to those who don't read Lewis Carroll). In their psychological states of both pain and yearning to join thier lover, they are seeing death as a happy ending, and they could now go and find their lover "on the other side". As they walk a full circle and come to the point of both the beginning and end of life (science geeks may want to refer to the word "quantum singularity"), they are able to look at their ruined lives (the falling carwreck) in a detached and uncaring way.
If you'll allow me to tootle my own horn a bit, it's curious that I thought of the word singularity, since theory posits that the singularity is the beiginning of the Big Bang that created the universe...
Big Bang. Get it? XDD
You know, when they said that I was going to go mad for Big Bang, I didn't know they meant, like, literally.
It's too late for me now, SAVES THYSELVES!!!