Experiencing Interruptions?

Do You Know Where Your Friends Are Right Now?

‘Do you know where your friends are?’ is a mind bending animated music video that unflinchingly portrays the social media frenzy driving our current mental health crisis. Through meticulously hand drawn 2-D animation, the film propels us through glitchy, lo-fi, darkly absurd scenes of fixation, manipulation, distress and detachment. We envisage such scenes as an army of phone-addicted zombies, a maelstrom of memes and an attention harvesting factory. Director/animator Bea Labikova deeply connects the film’s visuals with the driving untamed sounds of experimental pop group Parade with a track off their new release “Lullabies After Storms And Floods”.

  • Bea Labikova
    Director
  • Bea Labikova
    Animator
  • Project Type:
    Animation, Music Video
  • Genres:
    Hand Drawn, 2D
  • Runtime:
    4 minutes 20 seconds
  • Country of Origin:
    Canada
  • Country of Filming:
    Canada
  • Language:
    English
  • Aspect Ratio:
    HD-4k
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Bea Labikova

Bea Labikova is a Slovak-Canadian animator and illustrator who specializes in hand-drawn animation. Trained at the Vancouver Film School’s classical animation program, Bea has developed a style that is characteristically detail-oriented, intricate and colourful. Her background in music performance uniquely positions her to create animated works that are seamlessly integrated with music.

In 2023, Bea was awarded a Canadian Council for the Arts (CCA) grant to direct and animate "Do You Know Where Your Friends Are Right Now?”, a short music film about the monopolization and monetization of our attention by technology. She was awarded another CCA grant in 2024 to direct and animate the music film “The Aviator” about female flight pioneer Aida de Acosta. She is also currently finishing “Dance Is Everything”, an animation celebrating the joy and magic of dance, scheduled to premiere in Spring 2025.

Beyond animation, Bea also has a special interest in helping to promote and empower women and is proud to be the visual artist behind the imagery of the Women From Space Festival.

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Director Statement

In the “Do you know where your friends are right now?” music video I wanted to target the bipolar relationship of despair and fleeing joy that we get from the world of social media. The film teeter-totters between the comically grotesque and the darkly sinister, the manic highs and the zombie lows, the cute and the scary and between oversaturated colours and empty blacks. I wanted each scene to move fast, morphing and blending from one thing to the next, unceasingly moving on just like we do on our phones. Nothing lingers for long, everything is in flux.

I enjoyed using colour to represent the hits of dopamine and the shiny mesmerising world that we crave as we scroll endlessly. Stoked by the driving and wonderfully chaotic music of the band Parade, I didn’t shy away from abrupt style changes, non-linearity or outlandish representations. I also had fun supporting the music through abstract scribbles and shapes, catching melodies, timbres, beats and gestures in both subtle and in-your-face ways. I was inspired by the music pedagogy tradition of Eurythmics which aims to represent musical patterns through physical movement and I had a great time finding ways to explore that with animation.

A labour of love (or a love of labour?), I approach my animation from a hand-drawn style and in this way I feel like I can have a thoughtful and considered relationship with each moment of the film and give it that human feeling. What was supposed to be a 4 month animating period quickly became a 10 month grind, but I am so proud of the result and I am honoured to have this film be my first film as a solo director/animator.