Director, Guy Larsen, takes us behind the scenes of Orla Gartland’s stunning new music video.
Orla Gartland made a splash recently with the release of the music video for I Go Crazy, her first single since 2015. It’s a video celebrating all things Orla, featuring her distinctive indie art style, and of course, her signature expressive faces, which this time, are uniquely animated using a 2D collage montage.
The interplay between these collage elements and the background is truly mesmerising. Photographs of Orla’s face are animated in a stop-motion and are layered on top of a live video, resulting in a beautifully surreal aesthetic.
You might now be wondering how it was created? In his behind the scenes video, the director, Guy Larsen, reveals all. “I just sent it to this printer over here,” Guy jokingly explains whilst pointing to a cheap inject printer.
Except Guy wasn’t joking. Despite originally wanting to send the photos for the collage to his local print shop, and deciding otherwise because of cost (something creatives everywhere would relate to), he tried printing the disembodied mouths of Orla on regular paper and decided he liked it.
Using mundane, everyday equpiment, however, doesn’t diminish all the hard work and creativity that went into it. Guy reveals the team behind the video includes recognisable names such as Sammy Paul, Ciaran OBrien, Greta Isaac and of course Orla herself.
They approached Guy originally with the idea of a “2D analogue-feeling music video.” The inspiration for the concept came from a myriad of sources, including iconic stop-motion music videos such as Michael Jackson’s 1987 pop classic, Leave me Alone.
The work of collage artists such as Anthony Gerace and Waldemar Strempler were also heavily drawn upon. Guy explains he was inspired by the way in which “they manipulated faces and made them all a bit distorted and unsettled and a little bit creepy.”
The emphasis on using collages proved to be a perfect fit for Orla. “Orla is very well known for the faces that she pulls when she’s performing,” Guy explains, “I think it’s really defining, so I pitched the idea of embracing and owning that concept and extending that for the video in like a caricaturist way.“
From the look of Guy’s video, we couldn’t be more impressed by how smoothly the post-production process of such a complicated video went (especially considering how the actual shoot allegedly destroyed Guy’s living room). The organisation and stress of printing and cutting out hundreds of individual frames, and arranging them all perfectly, one by one, to be captured on a green screen, must have been immense!
The resulting video, however, is simply awe-inspiring. We congratulate Guy and the rest of the team on the video, and can’t wait to see what projects Guy works on next!
Want more?
Check out our Channel Spotlight on Guy Larsen. Alternatively, you can read about Calum McSwiggan, and his mission to break the stigma around open relationships!
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