Imaginary forces creates a whimsical paper cutout style open sequence for Nim's Island.

Labels: 2D, Film Short, Movie Trailer

Excuse me if I gush, but I *LOVE* Liam Finn. Liam is a Kiwi and son to the beloved singer/songwriter Neil Finn, and nephew to Tim Finn. The boy has some musical genius flowing through his veins. (I warned you I would gush).

Liam's video for Second Chance, easily my favorite Liam Finn song, is directed by Angus Sutherland. The video looks as if it was filmed on 8mm and the projected video was video taped, cut up and effected. There are lots of interesting stop motion effects and the video works extremely well for the song, as it crescendos near the end and the speed of the video picks up. I'm very glad to see that the video is as original as the song.



'Gather to the Chapel' video is one continuous shot. This video has gorgeous camera control. Either Liam can run really fast behind the camera and get himself set up for the next shot, or they've really done a great job of matching shots. I'm sure this was programmed camera control, but it's so well done. It's seamless, not like they've made a quick cut on the back of a guys suit as they did in Hitchcock's rope. (Oddly - 'Everyone Gather to the Chapel' and no one is there.)

I had no luck finding any information on the director of this video.

Labels: Music Video, Stop Motion

The Wishing Well is a short experimental one-man film by artist and actor Rod Maxwell. He shot the entire film by himself in his livingroom in a small 4'x4' homemade greenscreen. He did EVERYTHING including the script, directing acting, makeup, prosthetics, efffects. The video below is a trailer for the film and a 'Behind the scenes' video. The film has one several awards, too.... just check out the bottom of his website! It's really damn impressive. I was impressed.



Thanks to Diannah Morgan for posting it to the AE List.

Labels: 3D, Documentary, Film Short, Movie Trailer

Check out Sita Sings the Blues, a feature length animated film completely done by a single animator in her home. I was reading about this at Wired.com, who describe the film as " two parallel stories: the ancient Hindu epic the Ramayana and the breakup of Paley's 21st-century marriage. It does so through four distinct styles of animation, a 'greek chorus' of Indonesian shadow puppets and wildly imaginative musical interludes that use authentic 1920s blues recordings to link narratives 3,000 years apart." Intrigued?

It was mostly animated in Flash but some was scanned and animated in After Effects. Read the Interview with Nina Paley at Wired.com.

Labels: 2D, Film

Based on Madonna's ever changing look in the 80s, filmmaker/painter Rowena True uses stop motion, an old TV and Madonna videos to create a piece of art/fun. I'd love to see this a bit longer with the Madonna of the past 20 years also. Definitely need some 90s cone boobs and slicked back pony tail... wouldn't that be hilarious on a Barbie!? Okay, maybe it's just me.

Labels: Bizarre, Stop Motion

I was first turned on to MGMT and the song Time to Pretend on The Sixty One, my favorite time sucker.

Wow, I've never seen a video with such crappy keys, outside of community television, but somehow this video is freakin' amazing. It totally reminds me of those LSD like tv shows on community television too. It was directed by Ray Tintori who in an interview for Dazed Digital said "We wanted to portray a sort of post-apocalyptic utopia where the world had caved in on itself but the kids were all right and too resilient to give up hope."

I love the part where Andrew, the singer, is riding the kitten, who is named John Voight, by the way.

Labels: Music Video

Watch and enjoy:

Labels: 2D, 3D, Character Animation

This was posted by Pete Kirn at Create Digital Motion. This kind of stuff fascinates me. Enjoy.

Labels: Documentary, Retro

This was posted to the AE List by Eugene Pak. Richard's description "An abstract HD film animated in After Effects. The soundtrack, 'The Beautiful Blue Sky', is a realtime electronic synthesizer improvisation for Buchla 200e and Haken Continuum." It's purdy.


LUX from Richard Lainhart on Vimeo.

Labels: Experimental

By Dan Parker Moore. I don't know much about the video, but it's really cool.

Labels: 2D