In support of Bowerbirds recently released debut album (technically a re-release) Hymns for a Dark Horse on Dead Ocean — home, also, to Will-Oldham-analogue Phosphorescent and indie-dissonance-rockers Dirty Projectors — the label releases a stunning stop-motion music video for ‘In Our Talons’. Since touring with John Darnielle’s Mountain Goats last year, the North Carolina trio have been attracting a great deal of attention from pop-folk observants. If this video is any indication, the album must be pretty splendid.
Directed by Alan Poon and inspired by films like Microcosmos [clip] and The Planet Earth series, the video takes the visual spectacle of a nature documentary and puts it into a stop-motion animated world. The video explores three magical creatures from three different lands, equally beautiful, yet doomed by the hand of man.
Not only is the result stunning, but the process is equally impressive. The stop-motion puppets were custom made for this video. The bird alone took over a month for the puppet fabricators to build with over 300 feathers manually sized and glued on. For the animals to come to life, the puppet is put into position, a picture is taken, then the puppet is moved slightly and another picture is taken. This is done 24 times for one second of animation, shooting approximately five seconds per day. Most of the miniature sets were made out of foam and clay and then painted, while the clouds were made from cotton. Watch the stunning results on Subterranean’s blog below, or wait for Saturday, August 9th and see it in the comforts of your own home on MTV2. — 08/06/08 Bowerbirds video premiere on MTV’s Subterranean
Under the account SecretlyJag, the Dead Oceans, Jagjaguwar and Secretly Canadian labels have cozied up on youtube, publishing videos together under the single collaborative account. The channel has a veritable goldmine of content already available. Black Mountain’s “Wucan“, another recent SecretlyJag upload, is yet just one more pleasant example of the great content emerging from the label conglomerate.
also: BBC’s Attenborough on the ‘Bower Bird‘
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