DANNY BROWN - AIN'T IT FUNNY - MUSIC VIDEO TREATMENT // DIR. APLUS

The video for Danny Brown’s AIN’T IT FUNNY will be pure drug-fueled insanity:
A high-energy, tripped out journey into Danny’s own mind -- as it wrestles to break loose from reality.

This performance video will take place in two worlds: REALITY and INSIDE DANNY’S MIND. Cutting back and forth, the clear distinctions between these two worlds will blur and overlap. Like a bad trip, DANNY'S SANITY will slip away as the song progresses, and descend into complete chaos by the song’s end. 

REALITY: The video opens on black with a LOUD SNIFF. CUT TO: Danny throws his head back, and the beat explodes on the track. The song’s pounding, frenetic horns are like blood pumping through his ears.

He’s sitting on a couch in a run-down apartment. A few others are smoking and bumping lines around him.
We PUSH IN close on his face as he wipes his nose, then pull back to REVEAL —

INSIDE DANNY’S MIND: It’s a graffiti-covered WHITE PADDED CELL. Danny is in a straight jacket.
He’s struggling with GUARDS IN WHITE, restraining him and tackling him to the floor AS HE RAPS THE VERSE.
The walls are covered with the song’s lyrics in messy horror-movie graffiti.

We cut back and forth between these worlds as if the two Danny’s are talking to each other.
In the living room, he is struggling to suppress his out-of-control id, knowing that he’s slowly going crazy. 
In the psychiatric cell, it’s clear the demons have taken over: this is Danny’s madness personified.

THE ROOMS: We will slowly realize these are not normal sets. Both rooms will be built to sit on their side and upside down. Inside the padded cell, Danny will appear standing on the walls and sitting on the ceiling.

In the latter section of the video, the real world will also start to lose its center of gravity, with Danny and others appearing on the walls and ceilings as well.

Each room will be constructed small and simply dressed, with the minimal furniture and set design being bolted down. We will reassemble both rooms on a sound stage to shoot the different orientations and sequences.

THE MADNESS: Danny's cell will soon have no clear up or down. His performances here are all frantic, unfiltered energy. His animal instincts have taken over, and he wants to break out.

Back in the real world, he is trying not to tweak out on the couch as people party around him. By the second verse, he will look up and see himself on the ceiling. At this point, the real world will also start to lose its bearings.

Now the girls partying are in the cell and the guards are in his living room. Taking a cue from Fear and Loathing, things get more and more bizarre as the drugs and madness take hold.

Danny has lost the battle with his inner demons and slipped completely into insanity.

The real world has come unhinged, and it’s indiscernible from his drug-fueled psychosis.