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Saturday, October 15, 2011

Cats, Jackals, Fang's & Horses




Mr Cat & The Jackal saw Yesterfang’s insanely creepy illustrations and storyboard and then gave us the go ahead with total creative freedom. The band saw almost nothing until 4 months later at the private screening in Stellenbosch. Not many people get the chance to work on such a crazy creative project and I was honoured to be involved.

The first time I heard Bad Man He Comin’ I was blown away; it’s such a catchy, creepy, jangly murderous song. When Yesterfang heard it... this dark, little, wooden, zombie crawled out the caverns of their minds. They asked me to join the project, and being a fan and friend of the band, I couldn’t pass it up. I knew we were going to do something really wild.

Inspiration came from Yesterfang (for this video). Daneille and Marius had a clear idea of what they wanted it to look like and I could see this crazy vision unfolding. Old school. No CGI. Strings in. I tried to match the shots to their way out , beautiful ideas. “Taking out a shepherd’s heart…really? ”I think I said.  Huge inspiration was always Jan Svankmajer’s mind blowing - Alice (1988) and Historia Naturae, Suita (1967)  We were all inspired by Tool’s videos. Actually, the night before we began shooting, while Yesterfang were doing finishing touches to the puppet, I watched Tool’s - Parabola video and it entirely changed the way I was going to shoot this video. Ramona Falls’ – “I say fever” video for editing, which is such a powerful video and an all time fave of ours. Tim Burton’s - A nightmare before Christmas which still looks like a stop motion film and not CGI.

Working with Dan and Marius was super inspiring, I usually work alone because I’m a bit of a perfectionist and I like to be a loner, but working with them on such a cool project felt right and we just clicked . 

So we've got some more weirdness coming down the pipeline..

Most of this stop motion animation was shot over 10 days on a Fresian Horse Stud Farm 100kms outside of Bloemfontein, South Africa. The final scene was shot on a farm just outside of Swellendam.
The music video was officially launched at Dorp Street Teater on the 23 September 2011. 
Here are a few shots from that night.


















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