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Yeasayer 'Silly Me' by Mike Anderson/New Media Limited

Luke Bather - 25th May 2016

Mike Anderson at New Media Limited has delivered an incredible prequel to his Yeasayer video for I Am Chemistry, completed a few months back. And the clip for Silly Me follows a very similar aesthetic - a strange universe of body horror and grotesque humanoid figures. The time around, however, things feel even darker.

We're treated to wormholes within cooking pots, the beautiful search for a freshly decapitated head and layers of cosmic ritualistic dancing. We're also given the explanation for the crash-landed spaceship at the beginning of I Am Chemistry which served as a great 'in media res' opening. But now we're treated to a sense of closure and narrative premeditation that's very often overlooked in music videos.

The look of this video now feels a lot more handmade than the first time around - the digital renderings of handmade objects seemingly still bearing the fingerprints of their creator - who explains the techniques used to create these masterworks below - an ingenious combination of the handmade, the motion-captured and the computer-generated. The result is a brilliant, gorgeous realisation of a bizarre science-fiction universe.

MIKE ANDERSON (NEW MEDIA LIMITED):

"We use a pretty unique approach, pretty much everything in every frame is handmade and hand-painted. We then 3D scan all of it, bringing it into the computer so it's entirely recreated digitally. We record motion-capture of performers and apply the data to the characters for the animation.

"The lighting is all done in the computer. So while the final product is ostensibly CGI, nearly everything you're seeing is a digital record of something we directed or fabricated in real-life. Best of all worlds."

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Luke Bather - 25th May 2016

Tags

  • Animation
  • CGI
  • Director's notes
  • Narrative
  • Surreal
  • VFX
  • Alternative

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Credits

Production/Creative

Director
New Media Limited
Director
Mike Anderson
Production Company

Commission

Label
Mute Records

Luke Bather - 25th May 2016

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