BIRDY NAM NAM – THE PARACHUTE ENDING from Steve Scott on Vimeo.
This is the music video you’ve always dreamed of getting when your track gets a music video. It’s been round the Web a few months ago, but I only discovered it today via the lovely 8-bit punk Anamanaguchi (see our interview), on their Twitter feed. It’s like what you worked out when bored in grade school Chemistry class with your best friend who planned to become a comic book artist for a career, scrawled in the margins of your notebook. There’s an evil Egyptian alien sarcophagus shooting what appears to be evil sugar cubes from orbit. There’s a crazy space alien superhero who’s all Shriner and Freemason and gets special powers when he replaces his hand with a vegetable squid … thing. And good triumphs over evil, which is what we all root for. It’s the sort of trippy album art we don’t get any more, but animated.
The animation, creative direction, and concept are by Will Sweeney, who under the name Alakazam Label makes fantastic, far-out illustrations, toys, and animations with edible acid-neon colors, and hamburgers for heads, and organic tendrils like pasta or vines or tentacles wrapped through the dreamscapes. You can see more of Sweeney’s work:
Steve Scott directed the video, did concept design, and did his own compositing, which shows you he knows his stuff. Scott, based in Australia, has his own brilliantly wonderful stuff.
Birdy Nam Nam are a French DJ crew, cool enough to name drop Peter Sellers references in their actual name. They’re proper turntablists in a world in which that has become a rarity, with the prizes to match. Remix did a good write-up of their work in 2006; the best way to keep up with them now is to follow MySpace and, unfortunately for the world’s other continents, to live in Europe.
Justice did the production, in case that wasn’t evident; the marriage works.
And, seriously, special squid vegetable hands?
Credits:
Will Sweeney – Concept designer and Illustrator
Steve Scott – Director, Concept designer and compositorJames Littlemore – Editor / Compositor
Geoff McDowall – Animator
Ed Willmore – Animator
Roland Edwards – Animator
Dele Nuga – Digital PainterLottie Hope – Producer
Dan O’Rourke – Executive ProducerNot To Scale – production
Thanks to Big Active
Theoretically, all of this could have gone on Create Digital Motion, but I love watching a video that makes me feel differently about the music. Having that experience, to me, is what it’s all about.