One of the most fascinating things I have find in storytelling in different media is when something manages to feel greater than what is made.
What I mean is when a piece of media, through sheer force of its storytelling prowess, manages to evoke:
A sense of a past history
A mythology
A narrative that is more implied than told
I’ve given examples before if you’ve been with me for some time.
Escape From New York, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Mad Mad 2: The Road Warrior. They all have an epic feel and indirectly tell you about things happening beyond what you’re seeing and hearing.
I’ve expanded to other media, like music videos. John Carpenter has brought us outstanding films along his career, but his music has managed to evoke worlds as vividly imagined as the ones in Escape, They Live, and Prince of Darkness. I wrote about an unexpected surprise when I discovered a mythology hidden in some of the videos for his songs here.
And I recently discovered a synthwave/retrosynth music creator named Carpenter Brut, who like Lazerhawk, and Kavinsky, has a mythology running through their fantastic music.
And this song gives me the feeling of epic storytelling.
Through sound alone, Carpenter Brut has created a sensory experience that feels greater than just a song. He gives us:
Reference
Legend
The three act structure in aural form
And an ending that feels triumphant and satisfying.
I go into more detail on the video above. And I’ve included a link to the song below.
Shout out to
who kicked my butt by challenging me to put this out by this date with no prep time.
The Source: how cool is it that you write a novel that generates not only film adaptations, but also audio dramas, and possibly music? The Midwich Cuckoos, by John Wyndham, published 1957
The cinematic adaptations of John Wyndham’s novel: Village of The Damned (1960, directed by Wolf Rilla)
And John Carpenter’s take on the same source material: Village of the Damned (1995, directed by John Carpenter)
