Hornet Creates <em>Better Energy</em> for Moones

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Press release from Hornet:

Hornet director Peter Sluszka utilizes a medley of visual techniques in his music video for the song Better Energy by up-and-coming U.K. based band, Moones. Though their sound has been honed like a band with years of experience, Moones is relatively new to the scene. Better Energy is the unsigned band's first music video and was premiered on Vice's music channel, Noisey, over the weekend.

In the video, the band's ship has been savagely abused by a giant seamonster. As the ship goes down, the boys are able to escape, but find themselves helplessly adrift on an iceberg in the Arctic sea. They set up shop and make the best of the situation by fashioning instruments from the ocean's flotsam. Fortunately, their resourceful pet lynx is on hand to supply the band with nourishment pulled fresh from the sea.

The Better Energy band performance was shot over the course of three days at Hornet Workshop [1], Hornet's shooting stage in Brooklyn. To give it a playful and witty feel, Sluszka incorporated a variety of visual elements including stop motion, pixilation, compositing, claymation, puppetry, all of which was intercut with live action. This mixture of practical, composited, and low-fi effects is what makes the video stand out. There are animated ghosts floating about the screen in conjunction with live action of the band performing; puppets, one of which being a taxidermy lynx, that are manipulated into life; stop motion sequences of incredibly realistic clay heads being blasted apart and reassembled; and an ocean scene shot in a pool and composited to appear as vast as the actual ocean.

Some scenes were elaborate to set up and had to be captured in one take. For instance, the puppet modeled after the shipwrecked captain was actually burned. The effigy, made from cardboard, wax and paper, took two weeks to fabricate and five minutes to destroy. Furthermore, the avalanche of snow was not an avalanche of computer effects; it was a cascade of thousands of packing peanuts and ping-pong balls released from traps hung from the ceiling.

Hornet is proud to have had the opportunity to create this music video for Moones. Moones is an incredibly promising band, whose musical style falls somewhere in between pop and rock. It is comprised of band members Ollie Kristian, Laurent Barnard, Tariq Khan and Elliot Dunster. Each member brings his own distinct musical style. Ollie is the lead singer, lyricist and multi-instrumentalist. Laurent is the lead guitarist and also plays for Gallows, a UK based punk band that had been picked up by Warner Music Group. Tariq plays the keyboard and sings. Elliot plays bass. 

Sluszka has honed his music video directing expertise through multiple projects including music videos for Regina Spektor’s latest All the Rowboats, the Decemberists and Bjork’s Crystalline, among others. 

To get an idea of everything that went into the Better Energy music video, be sure to check out the making of video. In it, band member Ollie Kristian walks us through the process and highlights the key features of the film.