“...For every outside, there is an inside, and for every inside, there is an outside. And although they are different, they go together.
There is, in other words, a secret conspiracy between all insides and all outsides, and the conspiracy is this: to look as different as possiblе and yet underneath to bе identical, because you don't find one without the other. So Yang and Yin. There is no Yang without Yin, no Yin without Yang.”
- Alan Watts
And so begins our journey into the world of Mr Yang.
Shot on location at the Grand Hotel in Pristina, Kosovo, 'In Search of Yang' tells the story of a lonely misfit as he crashes and contorts through the streets in search of his soulmate.
How did the visual world come together?
I love how [Pristina] has a timeless look, anonymous but grand, with a hint of modern dystopia and surrealism.
The hotel location dictated almost everything. Firstly, it had such a variety of rooms, which gave us a lot in terms of production design. All the interior shots were done in that building. This made it logistically possible to shoot everything in one day. Which was absolutely crazy, but we still managed to pull it off.
I loved Sam Spruell in Fargo; he is such a captivating performer. How did he get involved?
We had worked together before on a commercial and got along, so my EP shot him a message. I didn’t expect him to say yes to our low-budget music video treatment, but he loved the idea and wanted to explore the dance thing. It was something he hadn’t done before, but he nailed the performance.
And then you also have legendary choreographer Mes Lesne. How did you collaborate?
I had some calls with choreographer Mes Lesne, and we chatted about the dance. I wanted something clunky, but also primal. A mating dance performed by antiheroes. Imperfect but genuine and true. Mes and I rehearsed the dance a day before the shoot, and on the shoot day itself, we let the camera roll to get some improv moves, and then the tone was set.
Yin Yin
In Search of Yang