Bright Eyes At The Bottom of Everything

Bright Eyes, otherwise known as Conor Oberst from Nebraska, has released an intriguing music video called ‘At the Bottom of Everything’, set in a fictional plane crash. The 4.41 minute video clip begins with Evan Rachel Wood, a young woman on a flight next to Terence Stamp. The narrative begins without music, describing the sequence of events that lead up to the plane heading down towards the sea.

With the lyrics providing an invitation to life-changing action the passengers come to term with their mortality. Outside the clouds wage an animated war with multiple airplanes. Of course the planes lose every battle – falling out of the sky.

Inside the plane we see a number of vignettes being played out. The first two characters continue to comfort one another. A young woman takes photographs then takes the film out of her camera and swallows it. A young man, played by Brady Corbet, passionately kisses the mature woman in the seat next to him. Some passengers treat the crash experience as a roller coaster ride – throwing their hands up in the air with excitement.

Click on the image below to play the At The Bottom of Everything video.

Credits

The music video was directed by Cat Solen via Stratofilms, Portland, with directors of photography Jean Margaret (animation) and Jesse Smith (live action), and producer Justine Smith. Editor for ‘At the Bottom of Everything’ was Nicholas Wayman-Harris from Union Editorial (previously Film Core). Cat is represented by Stompbox Creative.

Cat describes the 12 hour live shoot as one big party. The animation scenes were filmed over four weeks at Bent Image Lab using a Mitchell camera animation stand. The cloud puppets were made of fabric and wire. The planes were made of papier mâchè.

Lyrics for At the Bottom of Everything

So there was this woman and she was on an airplane, and she was flying to meet her fiancé sailing high above the largest ocean on planet Earth. She was seated next to this man – she had tried to start conversations, but the only thing she had really heard him say was to order his Bloody Mary. She was sitting there and she was reading this really arduous magazine article about a third world country that she couldn’t even pronounce the name of. And she was feeling very bored and despondent. And then suddenly there was this huge mechanical failure and one of the engines gave out, and they started just falling thirty-thousand feet, and the pilots on the microphone and he’s saying “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, oh my God” and apologizing. And she looks at the man and says “Where are we going?” and he looks at her and he says “We’re going to a party. It’s a birthday party. It’s your birthday party. Happy birthday darling. We love you very, very, very, very, very, very, very much.” And then he starts humming this little tune, it kind of goes like this: 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4…

We must talk in every telephone
Get eaten off the web
We must rip out all the epilogues in the books that we have read
And in the face of every criminal
Strapped firmly to a chair
We must stare, we must stare, we must stare

We must take all of the medicines too expensive now to sell
Set fire to the preacher who is promising us hell
And in the ear of every anarchist that sleeps but doesn’t dream
We must sing, we must sing, we must sing

It’ll go like this:

While my mother waters plants
My father loads his guns
He says death will give us back to God
Just like this setting sun is returned to this lonesome ocean

And then they splashed into the deep blue sea
It was a wonderful splash

We must blend into the choir
Sing as static with the whole
We must memorize nine numbers and deny we have a soul
And in this endless race for property and privilege to be one
We must run, we must run, we must run

We must hang up in the belfry
Where the bats and moonlight laugh
We must stare into a crystal ball and only see the past
And in the caverns of tomorrow
With just our flashlights and our love
We must plunge, we must plunge, we must plunge

And then we’ll get down there,
way down to the very bottom of everything
And then we’ll see it, oh we’ll see it,
we’ll see it, we’ll see it

Oh my morning’s coming back
The whole world’s waking up
All the city buses swimming pastI’m happy just because
I found out I am really no one.