The band members were around and were involved with the shooting for the pixelation. There was a room built for live action, and next door we were doing the animation. Sluszka says the Steriogram band members were very involved with the filming and animation, as was director Michel Gondry.Įverything was shot in a studio in New York, Sluszka says. Sluszka also shot through glass (plexiglass) to achieve an effect showing a woman knitting a drum kit together. We would thread a fine wire into the yarn, Sluszka says, or we would shoot through glass. However, getting the yarn to cooperate and stay in place from frame to frame was no easy task. The videos yarn universe was fabricated by production designer Laurie Faggione and her staff. À la King Kong, Walkie Talkie Man climbs the Capitol Records tower in Hollywood right before hes destroyed by unraveling. Sluszka says he shot about 10 seconds per day very long days over a three-week period. We took a little bit of artistic license with that. We added that, as well as having the song stop when the giant hand breaks in, and the sound fx of breaking glass. There was a whole sequence at the beginning of the song with a helicopter which was not boarded, advises Sluszka. Its a pretty short song, so the shots had to be quick and cool. We had a copy of the CD and we had to work out the timing, Sluszka says. Sluszka says he worked from tight storyboards by Michel Gondry, which covered everything that needed to be shot, but the animator was allowed some freedom to experiment. We also created a number of pixilated shots of the band members which were integrated into the video, Sluszka explains. Everything is fabricated of thread and yarn the Walkie Talkie Man, the music being recorded on a reel to reel player, sound patterns, sound waves, even the automobiles. The recording studio itself is knitted or crocheted, right down to the guitar and amps. In the video, Los Angeles is depicted as a woolly landscape. Sluszka used a Video Lunchbox for playback prior to putting a scene on 16mm film, which he says is very useful when shooting. I used a Bolex camera, which is the next step up from a Super 8. Almost everything was done in camera there was no CG. Frame by frame, second by second, he shot the stop-motion sequences to make the yarn come to life. In an era when computer animation is all the rage, Sluszkas approach is old-school masterful. to spin this yarn, with yarn, in stop-motion. Sluszka worked closely with director Michel Gondry (known for his collaborations with Bjork, The White Stripes and others), as well as animator/director of photography Adrian Scartascini and Partizan Ent. Influenced by Ray Harryhausen, Peter Sluszka created the stop-motion sequences for this video. and has some very goofy ideas taken to the extreme. Thats very different from the Steriogram video, he says, which is for teens and adults. Last year he won an Emmy Award for outstanding individual achievement and he is working on childrens animation for Sesame Street Intl. Today, Sluszka certainly knows how its done. I remember being a kid and seeing his fantastic stuff like the skeletons in Sinbad, and not being quite able to understand how it was done, he says. Sluszka provided the stop-motion sequences for the 2:53 music video, which has already seen airplay on MTV. I admit to being influenced by Harryhausen, says Peter Sluszka, creative partner/director of animation for Dancing Diablo Studio. The sequence was completely animated in stop-motion, using fabric backdrops and a knitted Walkie Talkie Man puppet. In it, the Walkie Talkie Man an enraged bouncer scales the Capitol Records building and punches through the window with a huge pink hand to grab at the band members and engineers. Shades of King Kong! Theres a scene in Walkie Talkie Man, the artfully crafty new video from New Zealands melodic rock/hip-hop band Steriogram, that would do venerable stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen proud. All Walkie Tallkie Man images © 2003 Capitol Records Inc. Arts and crafts never looked like this before.
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