Liz Green - Bad Medicine

I've just completed a new music video, this time in stop motion!

The song is by the incredibly talented Liz Green, and is called 'Bad Medicine'.

We were asked to put together an idea for the song a couple of months back. I had a craving to get my hands into a bit more paper animation, and thought it would suit Liz's voice perfectly. I listened to the song on repeat until a story started to develop in my mind.

Almost all of Liz's songs tell rather wonderful stories. She refers to them as adult fairy tales.

Bad medicine was no exception, telling the story of a man neglected and worn down by the world. There was a sense of unfairness in the tone, and the lyric, "Every man wants more than he did before" which started the cogs turning. That sense of greed, and unfairness, coupled with the repeated line, "We've got no way out", made it clear this would have to end in tragedy.

I wanted it to feel raw, and earthy, and above all, without end. I didn't want to tell a story with a definite conclusion or happily ever after, but to show that pattern - a murder which would lead to another, and another...

To set the story in the Western frontier seemed a simple choice. It just fitted.

I joked that I wanted to make Deadwood in paper, and to some extent, that's what I set about doing.

As usual with animations, it was a ridiculous schedule, without much room for sleep. There's only so many times you can wish your hands where smaller before you have to question your own sanity.

Talking to a cardboard tree as the sun came up was a definite low point, but I think it was worth it in the end. Hopefully you do too.

But I was not alone in my struggles, and I'd like to give huge thanks to Glenn, Tobias, Clyde, Simon, Jason, Carly and Mr. K, who were all indispensable in keeping my sanity levels just about on the page.

Now here's some clips of people messing about with paper for a while.

The Leisure Society - Dust on the Dancefloor

A new music video! 

I met The Leisure Society at End of the Road Festival this year. And a lovely group of people they are too.

Their single 'Dust on the Dancefloor' was soon to be released, and having seen my little animation for the festival, they asked me if I might be interested.

Of course I was.

Time was fairly tight, and the band were about to go on tour with Laura Marling, so it was very much a case of working with what you've got. Luckily what they had was a couple of reels of Super 8 footage from their last summer tour.

So I came up with an idea of trying to lace imagery of them into the beams of projectors, with an old retainer type character trying to catalogue the footage.

I don't think the band entirely knew what the outcome was going to be, and to be entirely honest I'm not sure that I was either. Nonetheless, Nick and the band were all extremely trusting, and just went with it.

We shot the band in a disused office in Old Street, and then the rest in a converted dairy barn in Sussex. My father, David Brett, took the role of the projectionist; how handy it is to have a fine actor in the family.

The rest was literally smoke and mirrors.

Little Tibet Premieres in London

After MONTHS of work, the day finally arrived.

Last Saturday, at the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square, we finally premiered our documentary 'Little Tibet'.

This has probably been the biggest project I've ever undertaken, and so it was wonderful to finally get it out of the edit and onto the big screen.

The project started over a year ago when Sonam came to me with an idea for a feature documentary. Sonam is a Tibetan man I'd met at pro Tibet protests a few years back. I'd also interviewed him for  short documentary I made at Uni, which was probably why he thought of me for this film.

The idea was to film a road movie, following him as an exiled Tibetan into the himalayan region of Ladakh; the furthest point north of India that can be reached before entering Tibet.

I liked the idea straight off, but was aware that maybe this was a little too huge a project to take on between just the two of us.

Fortunately I didn't listen to that instinct.

I was very much following the theory that "it's better to regret doing something than regret not doing something" at the time, and while it's a massively flawed theory it certainly gets you involved in things.

And so, it was with some mild terror that I hired a couple of cameras and headed off on a plane to India.

What happened there... Well, luckily for you I made a documentary about it!

What? You haven't seen it? Don't worry, I'll put a link to the DVD at the end.

We shot continuously for nearly a month. I saw some incredible and life changing things, and then came home.

To edit.

Editing took a year.

A YEAR.

Admittedly that year also facilitated several other projects, and in the scheme of things, a year isn't that long, but still... I was ready to finish.

Which was lucky, because I did. Even more lucky: people seemed to like it.

We first went to Tibet Society to talk about help with getting the film screened. After watching a cut of the film they jumped right in with us and pretty much single handedly organised the entire premiere. TS really were a blessing for us, and cannot be thanked enough for their work.

Okay, enough with the text, let's have some video. So first up, here's the trailer for the film:

And here's what a few people at the premiere had to say about it:

So there we have it!

If you want to catch the film at one of our screenings, head on over to www.littletibetfilm.com, where we are constantly adding new screenings all over the globe.

If you'd like to buy it on DVD, Tibet Society are selling it for us on their website here: http://www.tibetsociety.com/content/view/199

Or here: http://www.enlightenedgifts.org/little-tibet-dvd-250-p.asp

End of the Road Festival 2012

Another year, another End of the Road! This year was another great one, but that's not really what I'm here to tell you about.

I'm here to tell you to watch an animation I made before the festival to get all you lovely people excited about what a great time awaited us!

So here it is.

I built all the puppets myself and shot it on my bedroom floor (I'm still finding bits of paper everywhere). It was great fun to get back to some real stop-motion animation again, and also to use the same paper technique I'd worked on way back at my art foundation.

I also shot a lot of time-lapse footage over the week of set-ups on the festival site, which you can see here:

Hopefully it gives you some idea of just how much work it takes to get a festival up and running each year.

Clowning About

Advance warning to any coulrophobics out there: this post may contain clowns.

David Thomas Broughton is an incredible performer. Somewhere between performance art and singer songwriter, he makes music which is both haunting and hilarious.

For his latest album he's been asking video makers to create music videos for each song. Earlier in the year I helped Leila Watts create her first animation for the track 'Staying True'.

As the deadline for release approached nobody had taken on the final track on the album, and so I stepped up.

I came up with the most simple idea I could and called in two very good actors who wouldn't mind making a scene in public. Here's what we ended up with:

Hope you enjoyed it, and if you'd like to see any of the other videos, head on over to David Thomas Broughton's website, http://www.davidthomasbroughton.co.uk/

A big thanks to Aidan Hornsby for operating second camera, and to Damien Tanner for letting us shoot in his bedroom in spite of his horrific jet-lag.