Jake Frew, a creator and videographer, published a masterpiece of a video, called ‘R’ on YouTube. It is part of a series of videos he made, R, G, and B (Red, Green, and Blue, to reference the rough color palette in each). In just three minutes, R builds a storyline that harnesses all sorts of emotions and jumps back and forth between past and present, day and night, adulthood and childhood, happiness and grief. The video is an excellent piece of art.

In my view, this artwork wrangles deep and complex emotions about life and emotion itself through its imagery, audio, and effective editing. Watch the video before reading on. My theories and analysis are purely my own below.

Jake incorporates footage from both his childhood and recent present-day life. The entire video moves back and forth between childhood (as shown on an old flickering TV with a VCR) and adulthood, day and night, past and present. This iterative nature seems to mimic the grinding away of working at understanding the same problem over and over.

Jake not only is viewing his life from a meta perspective, but also actively living it and trying to understand what’s being lost. The scenes rinse away and repeat while adding different elements, but also working through a single emotional timeline – almost like a fractal pattern.

I have split this up into three parts to make it easy to analyze, but these parts were not sectioned off in the original video.

Part I: 0:00–1:10

Part I starts us off at a new day. A light turns on in the house. We see a showering scene, mixed in with audio of kids (assumed to be Jake as a kid and/or his siblings or friends) playing and yelling. The mood mirrors the mood of waking up - the tempo is still warming up. The piano plays softly in the background in a melancholy tone. We see the old TV with the VCR replaying a home video, and the cameraman asks “guess who’s birthday is it?”. This is a reference to the beginnings of life itself and cherishing that moment via a birthday.

It is subtle, but the man showering at 0:34 moves his shoulders in a way that looks like either laughing or crying. I personally think it is a hint at crying and sadness – sadness that the past is gone while he dreams about his childhood adventurousness and memories of when everything was new and exciting.

This transitions into the next scene where Jake is smoking under a low V-shaped ceiling, assumed to be some sort of attic. This is a more claustrophobic setup and plays well into the intimacy of the shower while being more direct about isolation, loneliness, and sadness emotions. Jake is alone and the smoke rises slowly around him. This scene is mournful and somber, but not pessimistic, it has a tinge of upbeat, sort of hope to it.

He leaves this area and opens up a door to see the sun in, but there is a metal gated door stopping him from leaving. He looks around for a bit. This scene opens up the outside world (outside the house) to the viewer, and transitions well into the following scenes as Jake goes outside.

The music tempo begins to build and we see shots of skateboarding with a lot of visual distortion to start. The mood is slowly moving out of the “waking up” phase, so the distortion is almost a mirror of the mind in it’s early morning stage. In one scene that is particularly artistic at 1:00, Jake skateboards next to a river, yet the camera angle is tracking him from the other side. He flickers in and out between the trees before the shot pans out. It doesn’t seem to have a voyeuristic tone, almost self-awareness.

This scene pans out while the flickering image noise from the trees slows down. It seems that the panning out is a reflection of the wider world out there for Jake to explore which becomes clearer. Jake is out in the real world now and no longer a child. We are now awake and the day has really begun.

I think this train is symbolism for all the memories and emotions catching up with Jake.

Part II: 1:10–2:20

Part II introduces us to the “red mist” effect that Jake swims in. This seems to reference “the light” of the womb or has some sort of connection to rebirth and awakening into the world, just like how the video warmed its way up in morning light to start the day. It may also simply be heaven, or some limbo state of mind – maybe the subconscious.

Shots of the camera swirling around him in the sunlight are mixed in with older footage from the TV. In one scene, the camera moves in closely to Jake watching the TV as a swirly black and white pattern plays on it. This seems to be a reference to how the past influences the present Jake – and also a reminder that Jake can only relive his memories of his childhood through the old flickering TV - things are slowly becoming distorted, and his childhood emotions are fading.

This is further elucidated in Part II through the choice of high-action childhood footage on the TV. A sudden “WHOA” during snowboarding, a crashing plastic tractor, lots of laughing and play-fighting. The level of emotion from the kids seems to spike in this part. Shots of the camera swirling around Jake are augmented by a similar upside-down shot in a box in the same scene, and then mirrored by a childhood memory replay of a kid hanging by his feet. This is another hint that Jake is still his childhood self inside.

It is a little subtle, but at 1:50 as the train lumbers by, audio of a childhood fight (or some sort of yelling - it seems to be in anger) floods in. This reflects the white noise of childhood sibling tension potentially, or the sort of bickering that we tend to forget about when looking back at old memories. The choice to run this audio while the train passes by is particularly genius, because the train’s noise of passing drowns a lot of it out.

While skateboarding, the train is the white noise that Jake hears which breaks apart his solace, and from the memories point of view, the fighting is the white noise that breaks apart the “blissful” aura around childhood.

Notice the lyrics at these three points:

• 1:51, “act like you look for it when you walk backwards”.
• 2:02, “no one to save you when you’re stuck”.
• 2:13, “part of my speech I haven’t said much”

All of these are important. This song plays well into the push-and-pull of showing past and present footage by talking about going backwards. It also seems to infer that Jake is aware that he is his own parent now and has to solve his own problems - no one is there to save him like they were when he was a child. There’s no overlayed speech like some of Jake’s other videos, and Jake doesn’t need to say much to relay his emotions here.

We see this excellent “ascension” view around 2:06 where Jake looks back and forth between blue and red light. This is an incredible scene. Jake looks back and forth between the left side - which is clearly a plant (life!) and window to the outside world in the present day, and the right side - which is a dimly lit lamp which has a more reddish tone. This right side seems to reference the past (and death too?) just like the red mist does.

Jake is suspended between life and death, present and past, while he processes his emotions.

Another camera-around-Jake spinning scene is overlayed with a box doing the same motion. These scenes reveal the whirlwind of emotions and thoughts that come up while thinking about the past - and maybe even while trying to move forwards in life during grief that this time period is gone.

Part II ends with another red mist scene – this time it seems that Jake has ascended into heaven. He reaches up and tries to snatch something in the mist, which seems to be a hint that he is grasping at his life and watching it fly away from him. This may also be a hint at the fragility of life itself.

Part III: 2:20–3:32

Part III starts out with Jake awakening from the red mist - assumed to be some sort of rebirth from his recent ascension, and being carried. He’s visibly ill or uncomfortable with the shining light of the world again. Another day starts. Jake brushes some leaves out of the way - like he is preparing to begin again (and maybe this is a hint at brushing off old memories and emotions).

The “push and pull” of the narrative shows up again here as Jake contrasts his spinning shot with the moon this time at night instead of day. Nights are passing by just like the daytime.

The audio has more relevant lyrics, notice these:

• 2:29 “what I’m waiting for”
• 2:50, “(spinning?) circles”

Jake is waiting for something, to find himself, to find peace, to relive his childhood? The circles lyric is a great connection to all the spinning scenes of Jake in the center, which seem to be an artistic way to spotlight how time is passing by.

One scene (~2:48) shows a cross hanging from the center mirror in a car while it’s driving. This is another excellent use of symbolism for life and death, and may be hinting at Jake’s recent ascension being connected to a higher power.

In one scene (~2:50), a shadowy figure walks up a set of metal exit steps to the next floor. This might be the same steps that were blocked off by a metal gated door at 0:50. There is a square hole (an exit door?) covering a big chunk of the shadowed steps. The choice to keep this square block hole in the footage instead of cutting it out for higher footage of the next floor may mean that there is a missing piece in Jake’s life. This figure reaching Jake from the past (at 1:00), may be hinting that Jake is looking for his former self when he wakes up and opens the door. The stairs are a great analogy to the floors of life, or the years passing Jake by.

From 2:55 and on, we see footage of Jake’s present-day life on the old VCR, and then more spinning scenes. One replayed scene at 2:59 is Jake on his skateboard from across the river (from 1:00). The flickering of the trees matches the flickering of the old TV nicely.

Viewing the present-day footage in the VCR is a genius element to show that Jake is self-aware that his current life will become a memory. It seems to hint that Jake is evaluating his current life (the present-day video shots) against his childhood interests and headspace (the old TV). This is a deep element of the video which shows this emotional metacognition that Jake is trying to relay to the audience. It is a call to action to increase the quality of your life today, which will be a memory tomorrow. It is also a somber reminder of death, while cherishing life itself.

The video ends with the original house scene, but now with late night audio including people laughing and what seems to be a party inside. This seems to remind the viewer again to enjoy the present.

What Does It Mean?

The scenes are really rich and interpretable, and can be watched again and again to spot new details.

What makes this video such impressive art is how it taps into how all these small and even subliminal elements effect and curate the emotions of the story without overtly stating what’s happening. This is a sign of a great artist! Great artists wrangle deep truths by telling a fake story. R is a whole story which centers around life and death, and shows Jake ascending, being born again, and searching for himself through a whole metacognition narrative of childhood emotions.

A number of themes resonate throughout this video. Childhood and nostalgia is everywhere. Cherishing of past childhood memories while also grieving that this time of life is forever gone seems to be a recurring theme. Also cherishing the past sense of adventurousness as a kid and how some of these emotions are still alive in the present day, ie through skateboarding and exploring in the van. However, there is sadness and grief in these elements too. Jake seems to be grieving the loss of his own childhood emotions while they fade as he ages. The world is no longer new.

There is this sense of “questioning identity” while exploring as an adult. While “playing” as an adult. Jake is an adult now and is parenting himself. The visual distortions and spinning around add to the mystery of memories and the dream like state of metacognition and meta-analysis(?). I think there is some projection here that other people may view Jake’s artistic lifestyle as “childish”, and this plays into his self-awareness and more personally sensitive emotions.

Jake seems to want rebirth and new beginnings, but is aware that his own life will look like a memory in 10 years' time, so every day can be exciting if he looks at it through that lens. However, there are some adult limitations. For one, loneliness is present during many of the adult initial scenes, and it is worth noting that all scenes of him in present day are alone, minus the assumed cameraman.

That door at 0:44 which may lead to staircase at 2:50 – this may be a hint that Jake is looking for his shadow, and as he gets older it continuously follows him to the next stage of life. It is worth noting that this it the last scene before the present-day clips are replayed on the old box TV.

Inspiration in Depth

The push and pull of this video is everywhere - from the train going by in different directions, to the contrast in the present-day and older videos, to the differing emotional states of the video as it builds. I think that this artistic element, in the context of the emotions in this video is more of a saw being pushed and pulled over a piece of wood to cut it apart. Slowly, Jake is working through his emotions, processing and going deeper. This is how emotions get processed and how people move on to new stages of their thinking - and life. Jake seems to be at the cusp of breaking through to a new phase of his life and found a way to make art out of it.

It is also worth noting that these videos came out with the new year, so entering a new year can be seen as a new beginning, alongside the death of the prior year.

This video inspires me through the beauty and depth of emotions being portrayed and wrangled. It puts the thought in my head that the regular, “boring” world wraps around my life in deep and multifaceted ways, through relationships with other people and the world itself.

Best,

Daniel

(PS – Remember when I wrote about my eigenvector theory of artistic expression? I’m saying the same thing here: Jake took the elements at his disposal, put them through his transformation, and gave us an excellent piece of artwork. I can analyze that artwork for emotions and themes connected to Jake’s lived experience).