Drifting in Silence
Featured off of Drifting in Silence’s album Dawn, we present a look at the Francesco Brunotti video for the title track that was captured along Bombay Beach, California with a camera & drone assist from Nino Buzz. The music of Raleigh, NC’s Derrick Stembridge is taken for a costal journey of desert coastal sands that sprawl along an arid landscape of ghost neighborhoods & villas that are baking beneath the blaze of the Pacific sun. Images of sky & ocean create a passage to explore the previously inhabited homes, grounded boats & photographs caught in flame as Drifting in Silence’s meditative sounds are provided with an entire environment of their own to enjoy that makes for an out of body experience. The entirety of the video takes the audience on a full day excursion cycle of sun to dusk where the eerie world of Bombay Beach is witnessed in a way that feels like an impressionistic documentary of what happens to worlds when the people move out & nature runs her course.
Italian director & motion graphic designer Francesco Brunotti had previously collaborated with Derrick on the videos for “Desire” and “Oceans” & provided the following behind-the-scenes reflections on the making of the video for Drifting in Silence’s “Dawn”:
We shot the video in Bombay Beach, an abandoned ghost town located in California : the goal was to create visuals that could match the ambient, eerie. nostalgic, melancholic feeling of the music. Shooting in an abandoned village created a strong contrast between these vivid images of abandonment and loss, and the warm tone of the music. We also used several old pictures of people and families who are now gone, and the fire – and some other elements as well – in the video is like a metaphor for the passing of time and how all these lives are no longer part of this reality : they are just faded ghosts who are slowly burning away. We also used several different cameras and techniques – including timelapse -, and a drone, to create this feeling of a presence visiting this place, looming over it, exploring the decay and the last traces of humanity left. We move from the sea to the beach to the village, back and forth, looking for one last sign of life.
