Taking Back Sunday| Sink Into Me What they made instead

Rejected 04/03/2009

Concept

In Tokyo there is a group of people called “cyber-drifters”; they are subculture that has come to live fulltime in the small compartments inside city’s internet cafes. They spend the majority of their time cramped in widowless boxes, using their computer terminals as their soul window on the world. I would like to create a high energy performace video that is confided in these restrained spaces.

Synopsis

We open on an exterior shot of a 24 hour internet cafe. It is night. The cafe has a huge neon sign with an anime character snoozing on her key board. We cut to a shot inside the cafe. There is a long row of cubicals. Several pairs of shoes sit outside the doors of each unit.

Each of the band members has their own closterphoic cubical filled with cyber-punk style homemade looking modintors, loose wiring and Manga posters. The band plays instruments that look like steampunk versions of Guitar Hero gear. They are literally bouncing off the walls in the small spaces.

We cut to footage of the virtual lives the band has been leading on their computers. They are using a crude 8 bit version of Second Life. A simple narative is revealed in this online world:

We see each bandmember’s avatar (8bit game character) hanging out in a chat room. Each avatar looks similar to the original super Mario. Each character is carrying little 8bit instruments. A guitar playing avatar strikes up a conversation with a drummer avatar.

GUITAR PLAYER

Hey! Do you drum?

DRUMMER

But of course!

GUITAR PLAYER

Wanna cyber-jam?

DRUMMER

Right on!

[They begin to play. It’s a two frame animation. 8bit music notes dance in space around them. Cyber-groopy chicks beging to dance along side them.]

We cut to more live action performance footage. We then revisit the avatars.

GUITAR PLAYER

Say WTF’s up with that guy?

[To the left of the drummer is an avatar carrying a little microphone. He is weeping giant tears and there is a broken heart icon floating above his head.]

DRUMMER

His woman left him for a Second Life millionare.

GUITAR PLAYER

Rough stuff.

DRUMMER

Yeah. He caught them making out in the guy’s sweet virtual condo.

[We see a shot of the 8bit Singer avatar hiding in the bushes outside the window of a crappy 8bit condo. It looks like something out of the original Leisure Suit Larry. Inside the condo a swanky Don Johnson-type avatar sits on a couch beside a Hot-babe avatar with big hair and red lips. The Don Johnson avatar puts his arm around the lady, causing little red hearts to swirl around her head.]

GUITAR

Do you think he’d like to jam?

DRUMMER

Yeah he needs it!

We cut to more performance footage.

We cross cut between live action footage and the fully formed digital band rocking out.

As the song finishes we cut to a wide shot of the band in their cubicals; they are just as active as before but no sound other than the clicks from their digital instruments is heard. It is revealed that the band’s huge music is completely isolated in their headphones. We close with a shot of a young asian girl visiting each cubical with a tray of refreshments.