A Horn, directed by YUN Sojin, is a video work, more precisely a music video with the same title by Amadoleejaramband. (Amado in the band’s name means “maybe” in Korean.) The song is about a girl with a big horn and a woman who took away the horn. The interesting but unusual song arranged with simple instruments might have reminded the director of a fairy tale. Remember that many famous children’s stories contain cruel metaphors and uncomfortable images. In that sense, quirky images in this video could be a natural decision.
Director YUN made interesting attempts to place the song into a fairy tale. When you look at the video closely, you can see two kinds of entities. One is the characters of the fairy tale. They are alive and act on each page of the book. They certainly have their place in the story. The other entity is the person with five fingers reading the book. The person, a reader and storyteller, turns pages to develop the story and introduces it. You may have seen this kind of format from Disney animations. Someone turns pages of an old thick book and closes the hardcover at the very end, not interfering with the story. The person is a paratext situated in an unknown space between the text and the outside world. However, the person in this music video is quite different. The character is actively involved with the story, sings along, and even corrects the end part of the story. Here the person is a reader, storyteller, text, and author. You had better not expect grand images in three-dimensional spaces from Disney-style fairy tales. This video presents two-dimensional artwork on the plane pages.
Don’t miss the unique artwork in the video. There is no vanishing point or perspective. Because there is no horizon or wall, space is defined by randomly organized furniture and boxes. Extremely simplified and flat characters fit perfectly for the plane space of the children’s book concept. Without any perspective illusion, it is filled with characters’ diverse poses in free ideas and space. You may recall the style of the United Productions of America (UPA), an American animation studio famous for [Gerald McBoing-Boing] (1950). On the opposite side of Disney, the studio offered utterly different imaginations and aesthetics through its limited animation and active exchanges with modernism and contemporary artists. Maybe that was why viewers could notice some marks of Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Modigliani in UPA’s animations.
Take a look at the video by YUN Sojin. The music video has more to the UPA’s style. The director must have had interests in expressing space and characters on two-dimensional book pages. She set up a world of bizarre images in a children’s book. Spaces are randomly unfolded, traversed, and mixed. In this unique space, the creator intervenes the story with hands and mind, just like UPA broke norms and pursued freedom.
At the end of the story, the woman returns the horn to the girl. She forgives her and throws away the horn. A picture of the girl and the woman is taped on the last page. (The tape appears in the video one more time.) Though the picture wasn’t mentioned in the song, it was added to the story by the creator. Maybe the animation is more than a music video.
HAN Tae-sik (Animation Producer and Critic)
[Information]
- Title: A horn
- Director: YUN Sojin
- Song: Amadoleejaramband
- Synopsis:
Everyone adores the girl with a horn. A woman is jealous of her. One day, she takes away the girl’s horn and goes out into the streets with the horn on her head.
- Director’s Statement:
I intended to make the music video of 'A Horn' by Amadoleejaramband like reading a picture book and made particular efforts to create an artwork that matched the song’s unique vibe.
