Janet Hetherington talks with Peter Sluszka, director of animation for Dancing Diablo Studio, about the company's work on the new animated music video for Steriograms Walkie Talkie Man.
Arts and crafts never looked like this before. All Walkie Tallkie Man images © 2003 Capitol Records Inc.
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.
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. The sequence was completely animated in stop-motion, using fabric backdrops and a knitted Walkie Talkie Man puppet.
I admit to being influenced by Harryhausen, says Peter Sluszka, creative partner/director of animation for Dancing Diablo Studio. Sluszka provided the stop-motion sequences for the 2:53 music video, which has already seen airplay on MTV. 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.
Today, Sluszka certainly knows how its done. Last year he won an Emmy Award for outstanding individual achievement and he is working on childrens animation for Sesame Street Intl. Thats very different from the Steriogram video, he says, which is for teens and adults. It [Walkie Talkie Man] is very arts and craftsy... and has some very goofy ideas taken to the extreme.
Influenced by Ray Harryhausen, Peter Sluszka created the stop-motion sequences for this video. Courtesy of Dancing Diablo Studio.
Trick Photography
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. to spin this yarn, with yarn, in stop-motion.
In an era when computer animation is all the rage, Sluszkas approach is old-school masterful. Frame by frame, second by second, he shot the stop-motion sequences to make the yarn come to life.
It was very traditional, Sluszka says. Almost everything was done in camera; there was no CG. I used a Bolex camera, which is the next step up from a Super 8. Sluszka used a Video Lunchbox for playback prior to putting a scene on 16mm film, which he says is very useful when shooting.
In the video, Los Angeles is depicted as a woolly landscape. The recording studio itself is knitted or crocheted, right down to the guitar and amps. 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. We also created a number of pixilated shots of the band members which were integrated into the video, Sluszka explains.
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 had a copy of the CD and we had to work out the timing, Sluszka says. Its a pretty short song, so the shots had to be quick and cool.
There was a whole sequence at the beginning of the song with a helicopter which was not boarded, advises Sluszka. We added that, as well as having the song stop when the giant hand breaks in, and the sound fx of breaking glass. We took a little bit of artistic license with that.
Sluszka says he shot about 10 seconds per day very long days over a three-week period. In all, we overshot, he says. We did about five minutes of animation... weird effects with yarn and pixelation.
À la King Kong, Walkie Talkie Man climbs the Capitol Records tower in Hollywood right before hes destroyed by unraveling.
Wild and Woolly
The videos yarn universe was fabricated by production designer Laurie Faggione and her staff. However, getting the yarn to cooperate and stay in place from frame to frame was no easy task. We would thread a fine wire into the yarn, Sluszka says, or we would shoot through glass. The yarn would rest on it. Sluszka also shot through glass (plexiglass) to achieve an effect showing a woman knitting a drum kit together.
Sluszka says the Steriogram band members were very involved with the filming and animation, as was director Michel Gondry.
Everything was shot in a studio in New York, Sluszka says. There was a room built for live action, and next door we were doing the animation. The band members were around and were involved with the shooting for the pixelation. Michel worked on the pixelation shot with all the strands of yarn and knitted blood coming out of the torso ripped off by the giant hand of the Walkie Talkie Man.
Director Michel Gondry became so involved with the animation that he even knitted the blood coming from a band members torso.
The effect of having the lead singers torso torn away involved a fake floor, life-sized fake legs and some creative puppeteering. Tyson, the lead singer, was standing through the floor, and the art department created a life-sized pair of legs, he says. Armature wire made them kick around.
We had to deal with a number of animation and continuity issues, but the intercutting between the animated sequences and the live action worked very well, Sluszka says. We actually destroyed the Walkie Talkie Man puppet on screen. He had to totally unravel, from head to toe, so we had to be sure the footage was great and that we were happy with everything we had done, because there was no going back for another take once he was unraveled, he adds.
While Sluszka admits creating stop-motion animation can be tedious, he says the results on-screen are worth the extra work. Its very low-tech, he muses, but thats part of the charm.
Steriograms Walkie Talkie Man video can be seen on MTV and at www.capitolrecords.com/steriogram/walkietalkieman while the groups album Schmack! appeared in stores April 20, 2004.
Janet Hetherington is a graduate of Carleton Universitys School of Journalism. She has covered the Canadian animation industry extensively, and writes short fiction and comic book scripts as well as non-fiction. In 1999, Janet received a Canadian Aurora award for excellence in science fiction and fantasy. She resides in Ottawa, Canada with her partner, artist Ronn Sutton.
