MUSIC'S IMAGE ECONOMY

How visual world-building shapes an artist's identity

- SHAMANI JOSHI

There’s a visceral moment in the opening seconds of the music video for Martin Garrix and Arijit Singh’s “Weightless” that feels gut-wrenching yet impossible to look away from. A group of Govindas (participants in the Dahi Handi celebration of India’s Janmashtami festival) stacked in a human pyramid formation comes tumbling down—folding into each other like a Jenga tower gone awry. It’s a scene shot in slow motion, where time hangs suspended in air as the gravity of its impact washes over you. And yet, the way it’s captured doesn’t cast you as a spectator to collapse. Instead, it evokes a stirring feeling of resilience—a sense that even in the defeat of a fall, there’s the triumphant promise of rising again. And that’s exactly what director Bijoy Shetty wanted viewers to feel.

Conceptualized by his friend, assistant director Darryl Das, Shetty drew on memories of the “badass” Dahi Handi festivities he grew up watching in Chunabhatti, Mumbai. He never intended for the crash to feel like a stunt—he wanted it to land like a punch, not a performance. “Dahi handi is always shown in a particular way: someone is tying a bandana, or spinning around, or a dhol is playing. But nobody shows them fall,” he says, explaining that though it happened by accident, he was mesmerized by the way the cascading crash unfolded in the final footage. “The way they fucking hurt themselves at that particular point and still want to engage in that sport either way…it’s just beautiful. It was such an intense thing that I really wanted to document it.”