Director: Lorenzo Fonda
Live action (London)
Production Co.: Warp Films
Executive producer: Laura Tunstall
Producer: Rachel Dargavel
Director of photography: Brian Fawcett
1st AD: Neil Wallace
Stylist: Laura Clayton
Commissioner: Jane Third
Video rep: Joceline Gabriel
Stop motion (Los Angeles)
Production Co.: Mighty8
Executive producers: Lanette Phillips, Catherine Berclaz
Producer: Ross Levine
Animators: John Joyce, Max Winston
Model makers: John Joyce, Max Winston
Director of photography: Justin Gurnari
Editor: Jeremiah Shuff
Additional painting: Luca Zamoc
Digital retouching: Geoff Duquette, Peter Sauvey
Colorist: Matthew Lloyd
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They’re seagulls, not pigeons.
But no, sorry, really, if you think they’re pigeons, they’re pigeons. You’re also allowed to think they’re jealous lovers too. The only sure thing about the video is it wouldn’t be what it is without the help of John Joyce and Max Winston, who built the characters and props and animated them. life as a director is so easy when you can rely on people like them and the only thing you have to do is fly to London and back in two days as your animators stay home working on the remaining shots and in a jetlag-induced frenzy you try to direct them via Skype at 4am in the morning sitting on a toilet in a bathroom to not wake up the people in the house you’re crashing in and make sure you’re done before you wake up at 6 to go on set to shoot the band. so easy. jokes apart, there’s not really much to say about the video apart being thankful to the band and label for being reckless enough to go with the idea and coping with my weird director antics.
PRODUCTION NOTES
This is a little behind the scenes that the label put together.
This is Ross (producer, right) and Justin (dp, left) and me (behind camera) breaking the storyboard into a shot list.
… and realizing the task ahead of us was ridiculously insane based on our deadline. so we laughed about it. ha.
A quick and rough design i did for John and Max for the seagulls design.
The seagulls, 8 days in the making.
And here’s the final beastie, complete with LSD-induced dilated pupil. i decided to make it smaller because drugs are bad.
Me with the daunting task of going through the storyboard shot by shot to make sure the animators and DP realized i wanted more than i could get.
Justin gettin the set ready. those lights you see are called “china balls”, which can’t help to spark every kind of sick weird images into any person’s brain with a reasonably elastic imagination. come on, don’t make me feel guilty about that.
My friend Luca Zamoc was in town visiting. how could you even fathom that i wouldn’t find a task for him on this project? here he is, surrounded by his usual aura of brilliance, hand painting the bumper cars.
Some conveniently attachable back up wings.
As was living in LA at the time, i had to go to London to shoot the band, and i just had a two days window to do that. talk about adventure.. anyway, before leaving, me and the animators went through the whole storyboard so i could give them directions on how i needed the shots to be framed and animated. i have to be honest, the idea of me not being able to supervise the shots freaked me out, but i had a hunch i could trust Max and John as you trust a bunjee jumping rope. the handwritten notes in black are Max’s, just as labyrinthical as my explanations were.
One pair of underwear, one pair of socks, a toothbrush, and a ticket for London.
This is what was happening as i was flying 10.000 feet in the sky over the pond.
The band! they are real people! made of flesh!
Just imagine the relief of coming back home and finding the shots board almost emptied of all those ugly looking small slices of paper…
Back in LA, my beloved editor Jeremiah had prepared a makeshift editing station in the room next to the set, so he could edit animation shots with band performance as we finished shooting each.
5am, last day of shoot, our dp Justin tests the softness of the carpet. he said it passed the test.
Us, 7am, after i shouted “that’s a wrap”. wait, i don’t think i even had the strength to do that. infact, i have no idea why Max and John look so smily and fresh. probably because they knew they were going to sleep for 72 hours straight. and i actually just realized it looks like i wore that shirt for the whole duration of the shoot.. that’s probably right.
Everything starts with a storyboard. well, that’s not true, you can not have a storyboard. and it’s also not true because everything starts with an idea, but let’s skip that part for now. anyway, here’s an example of how i storyboard my videos.