Mura Masa Video Captures the Raw Emotional Intensity of Youth

Marcus Söderlund’s new music video for London-based producer Mura Masa is an emotionally taxing dialogue in the language of dance. 

 

Reflecting the title of the track ‘Teenage Headache Dreams’, a love-hate relationship unravels between two teens just off a gloomy motorway, while sparks fly around them (quite literally).

 

“The idea is about the hope and hopelessness you feel when being young, about wanting to leave but staying,” says Marcus.

 

The director adds: “I have a fear of cinematic techniques getting in the way of storytelling and the emotions that I want invoke. In my process I use myself as an emotional seismograph being the harshest judge on whether a performance or an image moves me or not. 

 

“This project combined many very different ‘languages’. The cinematographer Daniel Takács and I have, over a long period of time, developed a language of our own. Through Holly Blakey (the choreographer) I began to learn a new language. Listening to her talking about movement and space, with Ethan and Becky, opened up a new world and a new way to express myself, in a new language. 

 

“All these different aspects could have stood in the way of my emotions, but watching Ethan and Becky in the film makes me feel a lot.”