Kaja Gunnufsen 'Au' by Kenneth Karlstad

In his video for Norwegian artist Kaja Gunnufsen's Au, Kenneth Karlstad does an excellent job articulating a particular sense of reality-displacement you only get by travelling on public transport.

In this case, it's the number 12 tram in Oslo, which director and his cinematographer Torfinn R. Sanderud have turned into a dramatic space that's both realistic and dreamlike. Travellers engaging in various activities - from contemplation to magic tricks to lipsyncing the track - and thanks to time-lapse photography also function at different speeds. A wonderful creative and technical feat.

KENNETH KARLSTAD:

"It’s the first I’ve ever had a technical approach to a music video. It started very simple, and the idea was to shot a time lapse video with lip sync on a crowded tram on a saturday night in Oslo with the artist, Kaja. And then it kind of evolved from there, being inspired by all those small things that happen between people on a tram. And different kind of feelings and thematics. Attraction, anxiety, urbanization, the fast pace of our time. My focus was that the narratives should try and overshadow the technique. It was written like a stream of consciousness and we shot it before we had time to analyze it too much. It’s more fun analyzing it later sometimes. Like dream interpretation!

"We shot it over two weekends. One in March, and then another one in April. It’s all shot on the 12 tram in Oslo. By a very talented cinematographer named Torfinn R. Sanderud. A big up to him, Kaja and all our friends and actors who participated!"