Flying High, Longlist - Music Video
Shortlist - Music Video

Moderat, Easy Prey

Cyprien Clément-Delmas

Caviar (UK) / Slime (SP)

Easy Prey is the only track on the album whose lyrics were written before the recording process began; it contemplates the relationship between love and independence, lamenting how vulnerable we become when the balance between the two tips too far forward towards the former. It’s a fraught tale, albeit a beautiful one, and a song where inner turmoil truly takes flight. The video, which was shot over two days in Barcelona, is a visual paradox with an underlying parallel theme - showing our heavy reliance on technology in the modern world and its consequential fragilities and interconnectedness - the pure snowy cold landscapes which contrast with the thousands of wires and computers, and the extensive heat the data centres produce themselves. Cyprien adds: “The idea of the music video is to talk about our dependence on technology. The vulnerability of our ultra-connected societies. We think we are stronger today but we are somehow weaker. Most of the essentials are now based on technology. This main character represents the essential workers that make all this happen but are also fed up with society, with what we are expected to be. This is a sort of close dystopia I wanted to create in this film. I think this scenario is not too far and we might experience something similar sooner or later.”

Alongside his work as a photographer, Cyprien directs commercials, short films, documentaries and music videos. He shot Day One in Washington, a 16mm short documentary that testifies to the atmosphere in the American federal capital on the day of Trump’s inauguration. He also shot at the same period in NYC, Intrusion, a 5 minute black- and-white film, about American violence. More recently he’s directed campaigns for Puma and Asos and the socially cognizant music videos, Before the World & War Dance. Cyprien is drawn to socially engaged projects and has led documentary workshops for inmates abroad with Audiovisuales sin Fronteras. In 2012 and 2013 he taught photography to young students in the township of Thokoza in Johannesburg, South Africa.