Video Transcript: 5 Mini Music Videos - Welcome to The Mollusc Dimension

A transcript for the video above is below. This transcript can be also be downloaded as a Word Doc here.

There is also a captioned version on YouTube.

The video is a compilation of five mini music videos from Welcome to The Mollusc Dimension (2019), the debut album by The Mollusc Dimension. The album can be streamed and purchased on his Bandcamp shop.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

The video lasts 5 minutes and 7 seconds. It consists of roughly 9 sections as follows.

1. Hi

Music: Brief original ident music by The Mollusc Dimension (originally for lo-fi spoof TV news show, “Eye Tea V Shoes”).

Visuals: A photo of vintage music cassette tapes on a dark wood parquet floor in their flat in Hong Kong. The cassettes spell out the word “HI”. A moment later, a second photo replaces the first – the cassettes have been swept to the edges of the photo as if there was an outburst.

2. Warning of flashing lights

Music: Chopin’s Polonaise in Ab (“Heroic”) played by The Mollusc Dimension. It is grand, dramatic, acoustic piano music with lots of flourishes and is in 3 time.

Visuals: Dark blue text on a crimson rectangle.

Appearing beneath the text is a photo of a mountainous landscape (Hong Kong) with a natural blue tinge. At the top is a multicoloured sparkly thin horizontal banner.  

3. Spoof Awards

Sound: Deep, booming “auditorium” voice: “The winner of eight golden squid awards including. Best Wild. Best New Voice Artist and Best Squid of the Here!”. Music: Chopin’s Polonaise in Ab continues.

Visuals: For each of the named awards, there is a visual. The first two are illustrations of Wild (a non-binary white queer with blue eyes, blonde hair, biker-style jacket and pin badges), and Urie Jo (a Black queer person with very short black curly hair.) The third is a photo of The Mollusc Dimension, an East-Asian person in the bath dressed in a dark red shirt and wearing a tall black pointy “witch'” hat. The effect is comical and the awards are all imaginary.  

4. Walking through my mind

Music: Moody hip hop beat. Piano sounds. Mid-low rock-style vocals with these lyrics:

I went down to the riverside

Shed my wings and then I cried

Oh, water blue! In you, I dive

To find the fire of my life

And in the crowds of people

I thought I was alone

Walking through my mind

Seeing what I find

(Music fades out)

Visuals:

Title appears: “Walking Through My Mind”.

The video starts with The Mollusc Dimension walking from left to right in a wide shot of a grassy field in black and white. The scene abruptly rotates and so he looks like he's walking downwards into the centre of the earth. The scenes fade out into black screen throughout giving it a presentation or dream-like feel, depending on which way you look at it. The clip also features some drawings from Squid Horse, a comic by The Mollusc Dimension. The character has big round eyes and looks a bit dazed as footage of overflowing water is overlayed which is timed with the lyrics “cried”.

With the lyrics, “And in the crowds of people, I thought I was alone” a collage of drawings of various people appears. Then The Mollusc Dimension and Wild (a white, non-binary queer) playing the guitar) appears. Superimposed on this monochrome footage is the footage from a train window, with golden green fields and trees flowing past from left to right.

With the lyrics, “Seeing what I find”: The left side of the field is still black and white, but the right side is in colour, showing a blue sky and the sea in the distance. The Mollusc Dimension steps through from the black and white side to the colour side and the collage of friends suddenly appears, looking like a mural, superimposed on an imaginary screen in the middle of the field. He walks past it.

Fade to black.

5. Red Bird

Music: Psychedelic folk harp pop. The Mollusc Dimension sings:

Red bird

At my window

I'll not let you stay

My house is made of wind, rain and snow

Why don't you find

Some other place to go

(Repeats) Some other place to go

Summers flow'r

and winters melt

Streets float by

Dream skies

(Repeats) dream skies

Visuals:

Title appears “Red Bird”.

A bright red rose in close up timed with the lyrics “Red bird”. Next, a bright red model house positioned in the branches of a tree. The scenes fade out into black screen throughout giving it a presentation or dream-like feel. A close up of the head of the comic character, Squid Horse appears. He has closed eyes, shaved sides and a short crop of dark hair. Overlayed on the line drawing of Squid Horse is a video of rain and a still of snow on green grass. This is synced with the words about rain and snow. Other images that appear are a photo of a wide shot of a city bridge next to a body of water, from an aerial perspective with a bus driving along it in the evening light. A photo of a plum tree filled with plums in the sunlight.

Fade to black.

6. Take me back to the ocean

Music: The music is synth, guitar, vocals, and backing vocals. It is electronic pop but the guitar was real!

Down among the fish and octopuses

I did make a home

in continents of seaweed

for several decades I did roam

then something bright and shiny

floated right before my eyes

suddenly, I was back in the city

staring up at gloomy skies

Take me back to the ocean

Take me back to the sea

Take me back to the ocean

Take me back to the [interrupted by next song]

Visuals:

Title appears in blue: “Take Me Back to the Ocean”.

This is an extract from the official video for Take Me Back to the Ocean

A blue paper fish passes by a porthole, and reveals The Mollusc Dimension in black and white, sitting underwater seated behind a keyboard, indicating the squids sitting on the keyboard. He is wearing a trilby style hat, a jacket and other dapper clothes. Cut to bright pink/orange felt squid with googly eyes appears in close up. The camera pans down showing that it is sitting on the red model house (also seen in Red Bird), past white cardboard stairs. Past a green and pink plastic fish car and pink felt squid.

Cut to outside a willow tree, tinted green and orange. From the waving branches, The Mollusc Dimension emerges with arms outstretched, smiling and walking towards the camera. He is wearing a t-shirt and has glasses on.

Cut to something reddish-brown, which turns out to be a close up of a penny sparkling green. Cut to a scene with the penny in the top left-hand corner and The Mollusc Dimension is running away from the flashing penny. It is black and white again and he is wearing clothes from the keyboard scene. Cut to a long shot of The Mollusc Dimension running away from the penny like Buster Keaton. Then, he lands with a bump on some bricks and stares up at the gloomy skies.

Cut to The Mollusc Dimension pulling the fish car back and letting it run along a concrete “road”.

From out of nowhere, a band consisting of three felt squids in a band with a miniature tin foil drum, tin foil mic and foam board keyboard syncs with the percussion for the chorus.

For the words “Take me back to the ocean”, The Mollusc Dimension is dancing but the visuals are very abstract, and the colours are psychedelic, first orange and cornflower blue, then pink and blue.

Fade to black.

7. Love is Cool

Music: Electric guitar solo from the song “Love is Cool”.

Visuals:

Title sweeps on dramatically from the left: “Love is cool”.

Handheld panning shots of various outdoor bushes and trees in reddish-brown/metal with a superimposed video with pulsing glitching rainbow colours. The impact is like punk/ nature/ a little menacing. Images suddenly appear synced with certain words to emphasise them dramatically.

With the first, “Hot night”, a photo of The Mollusc Dimension slides in from screen left. In the photo, he looks directly at the camera with twinkling eyes and appears to have a very bushy moustache.

“Old scar”: View from a pedestrian of a shiny, wet pavement in reddish brown with superimposed video with pulsing glitching rainbow colours.

Cut to long, blurry shot of vivid grass, panning from left to right just in time to see a fox running in the top right part of the screen. The colour of the whole scene is green.

Cut to close up of green grass from the perspective of someone moving through the grass.

A close up photo of the Mollusc Dimension suddenly appears with hands crossed in a vivid yellow/ green colour.

Cut to green slime-like sea in the most vivid green and high contrast part of the whole video. The are only four colours: bright green, black, yellow and white.

“Love is fire!”: Cut to a video of a bright pink rose shot from below. The camera moves from rose to rose to the lyrics, “fire in the sky”.

“Hot night!”: A high contrast photo of The Mollusc Dimension with palms outstretched is the last surprise in vivid pink.

Cut to a pink and purple sky with green trees waving in the wind. The Mollusc Dimension “slides” in from the right to the centre, looking suave in black on a black and white stripy background, surrounded by the green trees on each side.

Fade to black.

8. Soya Milk Interlude

Sound: Synth strings play a parody of sweeping, emotional, English drama music.

Urie Jo says: “So you say that your grandfather won a competition for composing a soya milk jingle?! How extraordinary!”

Video Description:

Title appears “Soya Milk Interlude” in bright green.

A half-pint glass of soya milk on a silver tray with a background of dark green rhododendron leaves. It is bright and sunny.

Just before “How extraordinary”, there is a keyboard harmony change, and at this point, a vintage, sepia photo of two humans appears – from the chest upwards. They are The Mollusc Dimension's grandparents and the photo is in an oval landscape shape, covering the soya milk. On the left, his grandpa wearing a dark jacket, light shirt and tie. He frowns a bit and his mouth is open as if about to say something. On the right, The Mollusc Dimension's grandma is wearing a traditional Chinese dress (or top) in a dark colour with round earrings. She has permed hair. She has a small smile.

As the harmony changes, the photo disappears and the soya milk can be seen again.

Fade to black.

9. Credits (in a bold font, all in capitals)

Music:
Mysterious swirling synth music. The Mollusc Dimension says, “Welcome to The Mollusc Dimension”.

Video Description:
Black screen nearly completely covered by bright pink screen with very dark purple bold font, all in capitals.

Extracts from Welcome to The Mollusc Dimension (2019)
Music and New Visuals by The Mollusc Dimension
With dazzling performances from Wild (Backing Vox & Guitar)
Emily Lai (Harp)
Urie Jo (Soya Milk Voice Over)
Studio Engineer: Felix Macintosh
Urie Jo Graphic and Album Art: Shaven Raven Designs

LINKS/CONTACT (not on the video)

Most of the tracks are available to stream / download on these platforms.
To my knowledge many of these are not yet accessible.

Bandcamp: Shop Welcome to The Mollusc Dimension Polonaise in Ab etc.

Spotify: Artist page Welcome to The Mollusc Dimension Polonaise in Ab etc.

iTunes: Artist page Welcome to The Mollusc Dimension

YouTube: Artist Channel Take Me Back to the Ocean Music Video

SOCIAL MEDIA
Instagram (making an effort to include image description. Mostly no audio descriptions).
Facebook (making an effort to include image description. Mostly no audio descriptions).
Twitter (not accessible).

Home

For anyone whose interested in training to Audio Describe.

Have you heard of Accessibility courses for creating Audio Description run by the excellent Quiplash (highly recommended)? We worked together on Breaking the Spell with Bird la Bird. I intend to join one of their training sessions in the near future!

creativity, music, video, mental health, storytelling, songwriting, transcriptThe Mollusc Dimension15 April 2021music, intersectional feminism, transcript