By Patrick Hickey Jr.
Review Fix chats with musician Shaun Chasin, who discusses his new music video, “Jump In.”
About Shaun Chasin:
Los Angeles based, Canadian composer Shaun Chasin debuts his newest music video, “Jump In,” this month. Chasin is known for producing compositions for film, TV, and video games, including the recently released documentary “MAMA!,” “Domino: Battle of the Bones” starring Snoop Dogg and David Arquette, and the Tubi original series, “Grounded.” His expansive work in video games includes PUBG Mobile, Apex Legends Mobile, and Ring of Elysium. Chasin is best known for writing the theme song, “Our Time,” for the anime Beyblade Burst on Disney XD, which has garnered millions of YouTube views and dozens of fan covers. His most recent single and music video release, inspired by his work in the video game world, is the eclectic “Jump In.”
The ethereal music video for “Jump In” is an expansive collection of scenes, people, and experiences set to the unique influences of the track, including Dubstep beats, hip-hop vibes, and progressive rock guitars (played by Chasin himself on his Les Paul custom). The experimental track allowed Chasin to tinker and discover new sounds and styles, bringing to life a cohesive mix of raw synth, soft piano, and vocal samples that cross genres — and the coinciding music video is just as genre-bending. Inspired by the more abstract music videos of the past, “Jump In” is a complication of stock footage that he painstakingly reviewed, edited, and compiled together to create a structure that fit the unique qualities of the music itself.
The effect is a Plunderphonics-inspired video intricately tied to the eclectic influences of the track and many interlocking scenes from older jazz-inspired sources placed into a new, modern context. Whether it’s a cat climbing to the beat over a piano or a woman swimming peacefully amongst the lilypads, the variety of images and scenes is uniquely captivating. It is truly the brainchild of the inspiring and experimental mind Chasin’s compositions typically encompass.
Review Fix: How was the video for “Jump In” born?
Shaun Chasin: At the tail end of 2023, I was writing music for the Illusion Labs game Touchgrind X. The game is about BMX biking and for the score, they wanted an eclectic mix of punk/prog rock, old school hip hop, as well as electronic styles like Drum and Bass, and Dubstep. For the menu music in particular, I had been tinkering with an odd sort of track which featured some old school hiphop type drums along with a Plunderphonics breakdown. We ended up going in a different music direction here and this track ended up being scrapped. I found myself unable to stop tinkering with it however and determined to finish it, just for myself. This track became Jump In. When I had finished the music, I found myself thinking about several music videos I had recently seen. I had been struck by how common it was to have videos where no one is actually performing the music. I discovered a platform called Pexels which gave me access to hundreds of hours of high quality and interesting stock footage. After combing through hours of content and grabbing anything that looked interesting, I began to edit! I am by no means an editor so this was a learning process, and one which I found myself thoroughly enjoying.
Review Fix: How have your roles in TV and gaming influenced your music videos?
Chasin: Since I work as a composer for film, television, and video games, I am constantly writing music for someone else. I almost never have the chance to write music just for me. The composition process for a film or game project is always so collaborative. This is a process I deeply love, but it does often mean that your goal, at the end of the day, is to please the clients, and to write the music that best supports the project. It’s not about your music, it’s about the project. I love being able to help tell stories this way, but it occured to me recently that I couldn’t remember the last time I wrote music just for fun; music that wasn’t FOR something. Since it wasn’t for anyone else, It could exist without any associations to, or without the context of an existing project or story. it could stand on its own.
Review Fix: What was the writing process for this song like??
Chasin: As the song began as an unused demo for a section of a game, it was initially only about 40 seconds long. Just enough to show the client the direction I was going in. If they liked it, I would flesh it out. If they didn’t, then I hadn’t wasted too much time on it! Since I decided to keep it, the next step became lengthening it, polishing it, and adding some point of focus. The lack of focus became apparent as soon as I tried to listen to it on its own, without the game. It was an interesting track, but there was nothing to grab you. I needed vocals. I had already finished the plunderphonics breakdown in the middle, which involved taking dozens of old public domain jazz recordings from the early 20s, placing them in the same key, and tempo, and chopping them up to create something novel. Sometimes only a fraction of a beat was used, but this chaotic, manic, and constantly changing sound is what defines Plunderphonics. Since I was already in this mindset of chopping, and combining, and manipulating, as opposed to composing in the more traditional sense, I figured the main vocals should be no different. I combed through hours of vocal samples, some containing small sentences, some containing individual words, and began mangling, changing the rhythms and pitches, and crafting the lead vocals as well as the rap section.
Review Fix: What makes this video special?
Chasin: Part of what I like about the music video is, because the vocals are so disjointed and meaningless, the viewer can then imbue the video with their own meaning. I tried to find as many clips as I could of people making direct eye contact. Devoid of lyrical meaning to hold onto, the video invites the viewer to wonder who these people are, what their connection is, what is going on in their lives. We are given so many short snippets of a life without context that we can’t help but wonder what else there is.
Review Fix: What influenced this video the most?
Chasin: The main inspiration for the video was without a doubt the music and videos of the electronic music and plunderphonics artist Pogo. My first exposure to him was a track and video he made almost entirely out of sounds from the classic 1964 film Mary Poppins. He used not only snippets of the music, but also the diablogue. This was my first exposure to the concept of Plunderphonics, a genre defined by combining tiny snippets from pieces of existing media in a rhythmic or interesting way to create new music. When you hear his music, you are obviously hearing audio from the movies and sources he’s sampling from, however I don’t think anyone could make the argument that what he’s created from these sounds is not transformative and new. He is creating new music out of existing music. His videos are often filled with quick short edits where the viewer is shown the source of each of the sampled sounds. Something I love about Pogo’s work is that he tends to look for natural prosody and naturally occuring “melodies” within human speech, which he then combines in a disjointed but musical way to create a novel melody out of those sound sources. The breakdown in Jump In was my first time dipping my toes into this style and this daunting process. For the video in the breakdown, I’m emulating this technique of the quick edits showing you where the sound sources were sampled from. In my case, all sounds were taken from old public domain jazz recordings, so I didn’t have actual footage of the sounds to show. This allowed me to delve into the hours of stock footage I had found to try to find footage representative of every sound so I could rhythmically cut between them as if they were the audio’s actual sources.
Review Fix: Any fun stories or wild moments during the process?
Chasin: In the breakdown section, I was having a hard time finding footage of someone playing a piano in way I found compelling. Instead of continuing to search for footage of human pianists, I instead used footage of a cat walking on a piano, and timed his steps to the rhythm the piano is playing. The cat is by far my favourite part of the music video.
Review Fix: What were the major lessons learned?
Chasin: After this project, I found myself wanting to create more music like this. The majority of the music I write for work is orchestral and cinematic in nature. I love this, and it will always be my bread and butter, but this project exposed me to how fun it can be to dip your toes into styles you’re unfamiliar with and of the value of sometimes giving yourself permission to write music for yourself and only yourself.
Review Fix: How do you want this video to ultimately be remembered?
Chasin: I don’t know that it will be remembered by anyone but myself, but I will always think about it as a great learning experience and as a wonderful opportunity for artistic growth.
Review Fix: What’s next?
Chasin: My next project is a feature film about the war in Ukraine by the immensely talented Ukrainian director Sofia Drai. I had the pleasure of working with her on her previous film MAMA!, a powerful documentary about three mothers from Minnesota, the national hotbed for the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, as they fight for accountability for their fallen sons who were taken from the world far too soon by Police, many of whom have yet to be held accountable for their crimes. MAMA! is available to watch now on all VOD platforms including AppleTV.
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