Plenty of nods to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in this music video from The Weeknd. For the properly trippy stuff, skip to 2:36. The Weeknd licks a toad and 10 seconds later some beautifully rendered visuals emerge.
Hi everyone, my name’s Craig Clark and I’m a second year PhD student at Northumbria University. My research is focused on psychedelic aesthetics in film and television. DPV has proven to be an incredibly useful resource in my studies and a couple of my favourite psychedelic sequences (Taking Woodstock and Mad Men) are already on the site. I’d fully recommend checking them out if you haven’t already. Given the topic of my research, I thought I’d offer to contribute to the site and so here I am!
Although I’m not studying music video, the first one I wanted to share is Jhené Aiko’s short film, The Trip, which she released in conjunction with the album of the same name. Both album and film feature strong psychedelic themes and ideation throughout. In the film, Penny (played by Aiko), takes mushrooms with her companion Dante (Ben Whalen) while driving through the desert. They take the mushrooms at the 12 minute 40 second mark. A trip sequence dominated by animated visuals ensues. The whole film has a psychedelic quality to it and is worth watching to put the trip sequence into context.
