Msaki and Jesse Clegg’s “Entropy” Short Film Encompasses Connection and Loss
A product of two friends with engrained respect for one another and an artistic brainchild of a collision of two musical worlds typifies the offering of Msaki and Jesse Clegg’s extended play, Entropy. The six-track odyssey journeys to the depths of the pair’s emotions, charting the terrains of companionship with curiosity, conflict, and candour. Daring and ambitious in its scope, the project is now set to be accompanied by a short film, directed by Marty Bleazard, that not only amplifies the composition of the songs but transposes their meaning into visual media in its highest glory.
Touching 25 minutes of playback time, the short film stars Ditebogo Mandita and Ally Damon, who play fateful lovers brought together by a chance encounter only for the pair to find themselves suffering the torsion of life threatening to pull them apart. From the two living their separate lives to the moment destiny causes them to cross paths, their stories serve as a foreground drama of the songs enacted, with the songs not being ordered sequentially in the short film as they are in the original EP.
Watch the short film’s first episode “Awake in the Nighttime”:
True to the name of its source material, the visual adaptation portrays the concept of entropy in two striking ways: as an agent of disorder and as a force of complete randomness that brings about goodness and beauty. One end of the spectrum sees a paranoia-consumed Mandita playing a young lady stricken by the guilt of having robbed a bank and the other end of the pole introduces a stressed-out Damon portraying a server with a domineering boss running on verbal warnings and a no-nonsense policy. In the entropy of both the worlds of these actors descending to utter pandemonium, their chance encounter where Damon works—or used to work—is lit up by an instant connection that sets the chain of events of their connection in motion.
The story that unfolds is nothing short of an urban Shakespearean play, with the two hitting it up instantly and bonding over their mutual desire to escape their current situations. While Damon entertains the time-out after getting fired – though with gingerly suspicion when he sees the wads of cold, hard cash – Mandita finds comfort in Ally’s presence as she finds herself desperate to shake off the guilt and the lingering shame of the robbery.
Together, they become a buffer for each other, warming each other enough emotionally with lively conversation and a young street food date, both of which are cut short by the flashing of blue lights and the screech of sirens. And while Mandita escapes and is able to keep the heat off her trail, the fear gets to her, and much like her second-hand car breaking down in the middle of nowhere, the relationship of the pair gives away, bringing their escapist fantasy to an abrupt stop. However, the ending of the short film keeps things open-ended with the pair together in a spacious dry land, which leaves things in the air for interpretation.
Check out the concluding episode “Cruel World for Meaning Junkies”:
The short film for the EP is an ingenious way of interpreting the presentation of the body of work, particularly since it’s a short project. Bold as it is, since the world tends more towards shorter forms of entertainment as per the TikTok-eroded attention spans of people, the film is thematically faithful enough to give an accurate adaption of what Entropy is about and what the word means in the context of two people coming together from two different parts of life.
Panoramic in its artistry, crisp in photographic direction, and coherent in its storytelling sequence, the Entropy short film does justice to the heart and the talent Msaki and Clegg poured into the source material. What would’ve been a presentation running parallel to an accompanying soundtrack became a living, breathing musical organism that doesn’t only move as one unit but also lives in one body and working as a singular spirit.
Watch “Entropy” short film: