Reel of the Month Club (Dec. 2024): Coat of Arms
December 21, 2024
If you pine for the glory days of blood-soaked side-scrolling brawler games, Mother Russia Bleeds from indie Paris developer Le Cartel may be your thing. Either way, French directing collective CRCR has fun packing this trailer with plenty of atmosphere as well as the old ultra-violence. [Watch]
Michel Gondry’s fifth video for The White Stripes, called “City Lights,” reaffirms the director’s standing (IMO) as a fearless and generous story-teller whose connection to the creative well is both childlike and constant. [Watch]
Spanish freelance director Antoni Sendra (aka PODENCO) fires up his signature mixed media skills in this type-driven collage for the title track from Green’s Day upcoming “Revolution Radio,” inspired by the handmade photocopy aesthetics of 1980’s hardcore/punk fanzines. [Watch]
Paris VFX shop St-Louis helps New York photographer Barnaby Roper push his visual experimentation into riveting new territory wrapping English actor/model Gwendoline Christie (Game of Thrones, Star Wars: The Force Awakens) in digital creations from Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen. [Watch]
Warsaw motion arts collective Lunapark bring the ethereal VFX to director Michał Marczak’s dreamy, dark and dramatic interpretation of “Beautiful People,” the Mark Pritchard track feat. Thom Yorke on Warp Records. [Watch]
Stellar character design and animation in this commercial project assignment produced in 17 weeks by a team of second year animation students at The Animation Workshop in Viborg, Denmark for the Danish NGO Verdens Skove (“Forests of the World”). [Watch]
Working through the Melbourne studio of Passion Pictures, London-based directing duo McBess & Simon apply their cheeky animation stylings to an online series of cheery yet sardonic “Friendless Fairytales” for Pfizer thru Sydney agency WiTH Collective. [Watch]
The best advertising case study we’ve seen in several years, this 90-second clip details “Impossible Game,” an innovative and ambitious project from agency TBWA\Paris designed to help France’s national state-owned railway find extraordinary engineering talent. Client: SNCF Agency: TBWA\Paris [Watch]
Spike Jonze contravenes all the established rules of fragrance promotion (elegance, sexiness, passive femininity) in this frenetic four-minute slice of branded content for KENZO WORLD starring actress/dancer Margaret Qualley with supporting VFX by Digital Domain. [Watch]
Directed and created by weareseventeen’s Jesper Lindborg, this near-full-CG music video for the mystery music duo Kids of the Apocalypse finds “kids taking refuge in a once-flourishing American high school where psychoactive fumes are blurring the boundaries of reality. Where the wild is fusing with the digital.” [Watch]
Like vinyl records, stop-motion animation refuses to be replaced by more practical and efficient digital alternatives. Join UK filmmaker Vugar Efendi on his tour back thru 39 films and 116 years of hand-crafted frame-by-frame magic.
[Watch]
The off kilter music and lyrics of Japanese singer-songwriter (and hairdresser) Uri Nakayama finds a perfect mate in the playful, unstructured and unpredictable visual talents of Berlin-based artist/director Hoji Tsuchiya in this track called “Spring Time-old Man.” [Watch]
Pixelar is a modular animated pixel typeface. The characters are constructed from 50 unique animated squares. These animated squares can also be used to construct your own typography, pixel-art or transitions. [Watch]
Discovering new animation work from French directing duo Mrzyk & Moriceau is always a treat as it guarantees trippy, often outrageous imagery held together by a certain subversive sense of abandon. [Watch]
