Dive & Deserters are two interconnected music videos created for Singaporean post-hardcore band Caracal. The project explores cycles of emotional repression, healing, and identity through symbolic, dreamlike storytelling.

Presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio to evoke claustrophobia and internal confinement, the videos follow a protagonist trapped in a fever dream—where recurring symbols like a goldfish, masked man, and swimming pool reflect emotional states of grief, denial, and release.
Rather than linear narratives, both videos drift between blurred timelines and emotional flashpoints. Dive ends with an eerie handoff in a theatre; Deserters begins at that same moment—looping the story full circle.

Together, the works explore how healing is nonlinear, asking: Are we moving forward, or repeating what we haven’t yet faced?

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Dive and Deserters began from an interest in how we process emotions in fragments—through dreams, memory, and metaphor. I was drawn to the fever dream as a space where logic breaks down and symbols carry emotional weight.

The 4:3 aspect ratio was chosen to create a sense of quiet suffocation—framing the protagonist in emotional constraint. Each element, from the goldfish to the masked man, was designed to externalize invisible struggles.

The decision to loop the ending of Deserters back to Dive reflects how trauma often repeats itself—how healing isn’t always progress, but pattern. These videos became my way of visualizing internal conflict: unresolved, unfinished, yet deeply felt.

They’re not answers, but mirrors—inviting the viewer to confront what we avoid and recognize the beauty and discomfort of being stuck between letting go and holding on.