Portland-based dream-pop duo Mint Julep are releasing Aviary as a free download single in advance of the debut album Save Your Season. Here’s the rather gorgeous video by Berlin-based A Nice Idea Every Day – that’s Vivien Weyrauch and Fabian Röttger – now signed to Colonel Blimp in the UK for music videos.

Telling the story of three teenage girls as they travel from the country to the outskirts of the city to wreak minor havoc – Vivien and Fabien employ the ‘camera shift’ technique they also employed in their also-gorgeous vid for Blue Roses’ Doubtful Comforts.

“The basic idea behind our ‘camera shift’ technique is to shoot a scene with two cameras from a slightly different angle but with the same focal point – basically like traditional 3D, but then to alternate between the two cameras in the edit to create a kind of 3D image without the need of fiddly 3D glasses,” they explain.

“There’s a lot of technical work connected with this technique this but probably the hardest part is to track the focal point in the post–production as in most of the shots the camera or/and the actors are in movement and there’s a new focal point every frame.”

“We shot the video in the outskirts of Berlin, mainly at ‘Märkisches Viertel’ in the north. The area is gigantic, we went there a lot of times beforehand with our DoP to find the locations we were looking for. A lot of stuff that we pre–scouted on Google Maps turned out useless as the whole area is being renovated and some buildings looked totally different or just didn’t exist anymore. We took a lot of elevator rides to find the perfect balcony to shoot on.”

Mint Julep
Aviary (Village Green)
Director: A Nice Idea Every Day
Producer: Johannes Conrad
Prod co: Colonel Blimp
Executive producer: Tamsin Glasson
DoP: Julia Franken
Camera assistant: Berta Valin
AD: Claire Kurylowski
Art dept: Tom Bonynge
Styling: Stiina Huhtanen
Make–up: Carina Wittmann
Girls: Luisa Weyrich, Adriana Giessler, Ann–Kathrin Eickhoff
Download: Quicktime movie
Watch: Quicktime movie