the giant white unicorn in the room.
so some stray thoughts on YBC. i will be brief here and SPOILER ALERT- i will not be answering any questions that are not answered by the videos themselves.
one of the few things we agreed on as a band growing up were these stories that united you with others in imagination- films where there is a sense of something beyond- something that forced you to think, to consider that maybe it is something darker or bigger or stranger than you had seen before... we thought of the unicorn in blade runner or the alien in alien (who is possibly more terrifying because of what you dont know rather than what you do (in the first film)). i love the idea of "the force" in star wars- it cant really be explained yet it fully consumed my youth- then when they came out in the prequels and described the midichlorians - it kind of stole the magic for me- it was less than i had imagined, not more. that is why we decided not to make what was being carried so literal and tangible- it would mean if you thought of something else we wouldve literally taken that away from you... 'brad pitt voice' "whats in the box, whats in the box?!" that being said we also knew that it couldnt be something like "oh they were carrying around "hope" all along or something that had no face or visceral quality"...
we thought of the world that the young blood chronicles had created- there arent true "heroes" in the traditional sense of the word. there are people who are forced to make heroic decisions and the people that make them often make other decisions that are not heroic or are often in fact anti-heroic. there is a gray scale to this story. one mans salvation is, and often creates another mans despair. the idea that the past can trap us- all of us... and the only way to escape that is to break the pattern. at what point are we saved? at what point have we done enough good to erase all the bad from our ledger? can someone who has been terrible their entire life change it with one heroic turn? can a hero make a terrible decision and cast themselves into hell?
the idea that we carry around what we fear most... that we protect that thing we fear... that maybe in order to destroy something terrible we must become something more terrible. and can we love something that is both great and terrible? what is our threshold? at what point do we stop protecting the person or idea we fear the most, cast them aside and step into the light? the answer is different for everyone and so it was different for every character in YBC.
another idea that we focused on was that sometimes in order to fight something so big and dark you need to get your hands dirty- fighting fire with fire (as was explored in films like terminator 2 and dark knight)… the world we chose to create and populate for YBC is not too dissimilar to the one that exists as far as the complexities surrounding morality. when is it ok to accept the lesser of two evils? when do we draw the line? when do we say someone is too broken to be fixed? all of these questions are interesting to explore and i think have analogs in the real world.
all of the images in the YBC were choices, decisions that were made to add depth and texture to the story… I'm not sure that heaven and hell were meant to be real- but they both allowed the viewer to see alternate universes with in the world and allowed or forced characters to undergo drastic transformations… to me it is akin to having humans travel to another planet (as in pandora in avatar or the planetoid in Aliens)… it pressurizes the drama and allowed it to take place in a vacuum.
this was never supposed to be simple. it was never supposed to be easy to swallow. in much of frank darabonts work it is not the terror of the end that is people undoing- it is in fact the human conflict- jealousy/prejudice/anxiety that tears the group a part.... what we decided to focus on was what could bring a group like that back together.
that which tears friends apart can drive them back together.
in the end it all flows pretty easily in my head whether it be different metaphors (biblical, entertainment industry, etc) or just a simple story. but maybe thats cause we wrote it, because i was there. in the end whatever it means to you is the right answer- i have nothing that trumps that.
i think this is all i really have to say about any of this. thanks for coming on this journey with us.
some films/stories/music i would suggest checking out that inspired us:
bladerunner (directors cut specifically)
do androids dream of electric sheep (book)
the lanoliers (stephen king- short story)
