Directed by Noah Harris and shot by illustrious DP Toby Howell, this crisply orchestrated music video is for Julio Bashmore‘s hot song “Peppermint,” featuring Jessie Ware. Graphic in more ways than one, this piece is perfectly lit and shot to invoke the feeling of the club dancefloors that its house music graced. An interesting postmodern mix of both detachedly abstract and strangely tactile sensibilities, it’s rather like a Rorschach inkblot test…so we’ll leave you to make your own high-intrigue associations with the imagery.
Read on for some great process comments from the director, excerpted from a Thump.com interview:


Feb 21 2014
Director Noah Harris: This film was arduous to make. 90% of the film is shot in-camera. We used a lot of 3D printing and model making. The base technique in the film is stop frame animation. I use stop frame in a very precise and technical way. I love it when people think my work is CG when actually it’s all been painstakingly animated by hand. I’m happy for them to think that, though. It means we’ve done an amazing job. I love the fact that the film is a perfect sparring partner to the track. Although the approach to making the film was extremely graphic and disciplined, the technique means it feels human. There are imperfections. It has an organic quality.

What other visual and sonic cues did you pull from?

Noah Harris: I’m a graphic designer at heart and I think its clear this film comes out of that. I designed the whole film as a piece of 2D artwork, before starting to move into 3D and model making. My original treatment had Jeff Koons as a strong cognitive reference. I love that whole brash, expensive, glitzy pop style with a surreal sleazy edge. Aside from Koons, I think a lot of the visual cues in here were subconscious references. Looking at the finished piece, I see a lot of influence from Jean-Paul Goude’s iconic Grace Jones photography, through Harryhausen, religious iconography, and even numerous sci-fi films. It’s a strange mix, but it kind of works.

Credits-

Directed by Noah Harris

Produced by Blinkink & Colonel Blimp

Executive Producers –
Bart Yates
Nathan James Tettey

Producer – Debbie Crosscup

Production Manager – Rob Wildsmith

Illustration – Gerrel Saunders (Gaks)

Graphic Design – Noah Harris

Previsualisation –
Noah Harris
Simone Ghilardotti
Simone Nunziato
Matteo Sanna
Christine Hooper

2D Animation –
Frankie Swan
Mark Abbott
Tabbi O’Connell
Chris Cray
Noah Harris

Director of Photography – Toby Howell

Camera Assistant – Max Halstead

Gaffer – Sol Sahaiti

Art Direction – Stripeland

Lead stop frame animator – Andy Biddle

Stop frame animation –
Henry Nicholson
Tom Edgar
Matt Wierenga
Luke George

Editor -Max Windows @ Stitch

Colourist – Aubrey Woodiwiss @ Electric Theatre Collective

Post Production –
Prodigious
Nineteentwenty
Cherry Cherry
Blind Pig
EightVFX
Glasssworks
Blinkink Studio

Shot at Prodigious Studio

Paper and printing –
GF Smith
FE Burman

3D printing & Scanning –
3D Print UK
Digits to Widgets

Blog written by Vera Long