Composer | Tran Tien
Director | Viet Tu
Performed by | Kasim Hoang Vu
In the early 2000s, when Vietnam's music video production industry was still in its nascent stages, the vast majority of music videos were constructed as literal visual translations of the lyrics. Experiments with visual language, video art, or international staging methodologies were virtually nonexistent. Against this backdrop, Kasim Hoang Vu's “Soi con ngo ngac”, directed by Viet Tu, opted for a radically different trajectory: transforming the song into a surreal visual universe where the narrative was evoked through lighting, movement, spatial design, and highly symbolic imagery. Archival records note that the video left a profound impact with its surreal spatial environment, dominated by black, white, and a distinct blue hue generated by light refraction effects while filming inside a deep water tank.
“Soi con ngo ngac” stands as one of the first commercial music videos in Vietnam executed in an underwater studio, driven by a surrealist spirit with a visual mindset heavily influenced by master painters such as Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso. Refusing to view objects through a conventional lens, director Viet Tu sought to place ordinary imagery into extraordinary contexts, architecting a visual universe where lighting, physical form, movement, and spatial environments all carried profound expressive weight. Based on composer Tran Tien's composition about orphaned and wandering children, the narrative was not directly illustrated; rather, it was translated into a highly symbolic struggle between good and evil.
This avant-garde mindset catalyzed an extraordinary experiment: submerging the entire principal photography of the music video underwater. Director Viet Tu envisioned “Soi con ngo ngac” as one of the very first music videos in Vietnam to utilize underwater imagery as a novel artistic language. Operating under severely constrained technical conditions without specialized underwater cinematography equipment, director Viet Tu had to rely on a cinematographer friend in Hollywood to procure a second-hand underwater camera housing. To execute these shots, the director even accepted the immense financial risk of fully compensating for a borrowed Sony digital cinema camera if the housing suffered a leak.
The subsequent technical hurdle was engineering an environment dark enough for the underwater footage to resemble a cosmic black hole, pierced by only a single beam of light traversing the darkness - perfectly capturing the young boy's profound despair in the face of evil. Viet Tu scoured professional diving pools nationwide to secure a facility with adequate depth. Ultimately, a 4.5-meter-deep diving pool was selected. The entire crew spent 12 grueling hours meticulously draping the pool's perimeter in black fabric, effectively transforming a sports facility into a space of near-absolute darkness for the shoot.
Beyond the equipment, the cast and crew also had to adapt to these extreme filming conditions. The two actors and the production team underwent a crash course in breath-hold diving, while executing complex scenes in performance costumes that were fundamentally not designed for aquatic environments, causing severe movement restrictions. The total production timeline spanned two shooting days, including a grueling 12-hour continuous stretch where the director, cinematographer, singer, and actors had to remain submerged to capture the crucial sequences.
Upon its premiere broadcast on the national television network VTV, “Soi con ngo ngac” made a profound impression on industry experts and the media due to its highly distinctive approach. The video was subsequently awarded by the Art Council of the VTV - “Bai hat toi yeu” program during its 2nd edition in 2003, cementing a pivotal milestone in the early stages of Viet Tu's career.
For Viet Tu and Dream Studio, “Soi con ngo ngac” was not merely a musical product, but a rigorous experiment in injecting a visual arts mindset into commercial music video production. The project exemplifies a defining trait that has become the Unique DNA of Viet Tu's creative journey: when faced with constrained technical conditions, instead of scaling back the ambition, those very limitations become the catalyst to discover and pioneer entirely unprecedented methods of artistic expression.
