S7 Visual Guides

Ep. 13 – Life: The Biggest Troll

While God may have made the world, man made the internet, a digital world, in line with Glover’s comparison of the invention of the internet being a new Big Bang. In this digital world, “you don’t need a name,” which demonstrates the impact the internet has had on the expression of traditional identity.

Ep. 12 – II. Earth: The Oldest Computer [The Last Night]

In script, The Boy drives down the I-10 highway listening to the song “Danny Glover” by Young Thug (above). He is going to his mansion to oversee a drug dealer about to go very wrong.

The title “Danny Glover” indicates why Glover may have chosen to include it in the script. For nearly his entire career, people have confused Donald Glover as either Danny Glover’s son or as the elder Glover himself, even though they have no relation, which he discusses with Access Hollywood (left) and is the subject matter in a scene from Issa Rae’s Awkward Black Girl.

Glover also promoted Thug’s track a bit during his performance art press run, and when asked to play a song he liked for a radio show, chose Danny Glover and talked about the connection to himself and even how funny it might be to make a remix with his own name.

Ep. 11 – III. Urn / I. Pink Toes

Urn, produced by Childish Gambino and Ludwig Göransson, was featured in the above YouTube video, preceding BTI‘s release 12.10.13 release.

Ep. 10 – Zealots of Stockholm [Free Information]

Zealots of Stockholm begins and ends with a cold, somber sonic environment, fitting The Boy’s emotional state after the loss of his father, and reflective of his new environment in Stockholm, a notoriously cold city where it’s dark most of the day in the winter.

Ep. 9 – Death by Numbers / Flight of the Navigator

An abstract graphic animation that envisions The Boy’s surreal experience of a world somewhere in between life and death, this video follows the abrupt ending of No Exit. This animation is scored by BTI’s next track (audible in the video), the beginning of Act 4, “Death by Numbers.”

Death by Numb(ers)

The title holds a duality: organic and geometric, natural and digital: death and life being natural states, and numbers representing the digital through lines of code and technology. The title represents the coexistence of the two, their interwoven nature and the heightened tension between them.

Ep. 8 – The Party / No Exit

After the wedding scenes that 3005 soundtracks in the screenplay, the script cuts to The Boy playing piano at his mansion as people start to arrive for yet another party, prompting the beginning of Act 3, the aptly-titled “Playing Around Before the Party Starts.”

“It was the closest you could get to having powers.”
BTI Screenplay, Act 3

The mansion is starting to get messier and messier, and apparently the cleaners have stopped showing up because they weren’t being paid. There’s trash everywhere, surfaces are sticky, and you can’t slide around on the floor. The script mourns this: “Now, dried alcohol stops you before you even get to the kitchen door. The Boy really loved sliding into the kitchen when he was a kid. It was the closest you could get to having powers.“

Ep. 7 – 3005

In our first ever video analysis, we break down the 3005 music video (above).

BTI Screenplay

Still in Oakland, the crew head to a hotel for the night and see a wedding happening in the lobby. The crew leaves, but The Boy stays to watch the wedding. While filming the couple dancing, an older Indian dude comes up to The Boy, a sort of “meeting with the mentor” in traditional literary structures on The Boy’s current “road of trials.”

Ep. 4 – Dial-Up / I. The Worst Guys / II. Shadows

As Act Two begins, The Boy examines the sleep-walking existence he’s been living. This process is slow, and fittingly, Act Two begins with the instrumental track “Dial Up.”

Ep. 2 – The Library/Crawl

With his 2013 album Because the Internet, Donald Glover sought to construct a transmedia world by weaving together physical, sonic, visual, and online material Under his pseudonym Childish Gambino. For the most comprehensive compilation of the world’s components, visit S7 co-writer Camden Ostrander’s piktochart.

S7E1 – The Transmedia World of Because The Internet

“I wanted to make something that says, no matter how bad you fuck up, or mistakes you’ve made during the year, your life, your eternity. You’re always allowed to be better. You’re always allowed to grow up. If you want.”
Donald Glover’s open letter, posted to Instagram, describing his 2013 album, Because the Internet, released under his pseudonym “Childish Gambino”

Donald McKinley Glover Jr.

Born on September 25, 1983 at Edwards Air Force Base in California, Donald grew up with his siblings Bree and Stephen, as well as a steady flow of foster children. His mother Beverly ran a daycare from their home in Stone Mountain, Georgia, and his father, Donald Sr, was in the Air Force and later was a postal worker.

Pictured left to right: Bree, Donald Sr., Beverly, Stephen, and Donald.