Director

Chris Ullens

Celebrity Deathmatch meets Groundhog Day in Chris Ullens' terrific and cheerfully gory video for UK teen pop singer Gayle's team-up with singer-songwriter Blackbear - featuring the pair as toys in toytown suburbia, with homicidal tendencies.In this stop-motion epic of nextdoor neighbour hostility, Gayle takes the form of a figure the size of a toy soldier, leaving her house (after guzzling down a real-size frankfurter) to wage war on Blackbear, who lives next door. As he is mowing the lawn to make a rude sign, she feeds him and his friends to the mower. And that just starts the begins the increasingly extravagant&nbsp;ways in which they dispatch each other on a daily basis.&nbsp;[imgtoken data:1]Ullens is the king of stop-motion animation who has given us some wonderful videos for the likes of Fergie, Rex Orange County and Lee Ann Womack, all from his&nbsp;tabletop studio. This one falls into the category of toy-related gore that he pioneered with Two Fingers' Vengeance Rhythm, a real stomach-churning splatterfest&nbsp;involving a psychopathic teddybear.&nbsp;This is rather more playful - as the animation was created with a series of non-moving&nbsp;plastic figurines. Ullens also only had a four-week turnaround to create his dark comedy - and he still manages to engineer something of a Happy Ever After...&nbsp;

Brin Frost

Jade Bogue

Friends Electric

Trevor Joseph Newton

Jamie Durand

Matthew James Day

Atlantic Records

Gayle ft Blackbear 'fmk' by Chris Ullens

Gayle-(with-Blackbear)-'Fmk'-by-Chris-Ullens

Animation maestro Chris Ullens reunites with Rex Orange County, with their first collaboration since Loving Is Easy back in 2017, to create a sweetly romantic tale for Amazing.In contrast to <a href="https://www.promonews.tv/videos/2017/11/09/rex-orange-county-ft-benny-sings-loving-easy-chris-ullens/50382" target="_blank">Loving Is Easy</a>, where he employed stop motion to animate Rex's bedroom performance with Benny Sings, Ullens opted to use hand puppets to handcraft his story about Mr Hand - a milkman of an alpine town, who milks Cow each morning before going on his delivery round.But his happy regular routine is disturbed when he meets&nbsp;a young lady (hand), falling head-over-thumbs in love..."It's really cool that [Rex] came back to us for a second one!" says Chris Ullens. "He said it was the sister song to the first one we did a video for, and that he wanted us to be back on it for that. But the schedule was mad -&nbsp;so instead of stop-motion we suggested puppeteering and he loved the idea. The schedule was still mad though, as we took four and a half weeks to deliver. But really pleased with the result!"

United Kingdom

Jack McGinity

Alt-Pop

Rex Orange County 'Amazing' by Chris Ullens

Rex-Orange-County-'Amazing'-by-Chris-Ullens

Somewhere in an enigmatic and dystopian future, an evil Queen is entertained by her very own brutal talent show, in Chris Ullen's spectacular stop-motion animated promo for Grammy-winning metal artist Poppy.&nbsp;Using slick puppetry and sci-fi inspired interiors, Ullens creates a nightmare vision which alludes to the darker side of the music industry.&nbsp;Treated like throwaway clones, each of the&nbsp;puppet female rock-stars are constructed on a factory production line, before being thrust on stage to please the figurehead - and then being thrown from their platforms to whatever waits beneath.[imgtoken data:1]Poppy has long held the attention of industry pros and fans alike, and this visual metamorphosis is the latest in a series of exciting and explosive transformations.&nbsp;Every aspect of the creative is exemplary - from a talented team that Chris Ullens credits below, as well as revealing the relentless demands of building robots on factory conveyor in stop motion animation, doing all of the work himself.&nbsp;But as a result, the&nbsp;video's concept will linger long after the three and a half minute runtime.[imgtoken data:2]

Ben Austin

Lewis Crossfield

Time Based Arts

Adeena Grubb

Alternative

Poppy 'Her' by Chris Ullens

Poppy-'Her'-by-Chris-Ullens

Chris Ullens' video for Wait For You is the result of a global collaboration&nbsp;of performers, all filming themselves interpreting Tom Walker's uplifting and emotional track through the medium of dance. All their videos were then edited together and enhanced with hand-drawn animations by Ullens and colleagues to amplify their dynamic, fluid movements.Featuring performances from dancers around the world including India, Nigeria, Japan, South Korea, Belgium, Lebanon, France, Germany, the UK and the US, each dancer expresses the emotions of Wait For You&nbsp;to tell its story of healing and feeling free from your past in their own ways – visualizing the therapeutic powers of music and the cathartic expression it can provide.&nbsp; Although each dancer has filmed themselves separately, there’s a real sense of global unity and togetherness in the video as each dancer’s interpretation of the song&nbsp;comes together as one. A heart-warming sentiment considering the isolation brought on by the COVID-19 outbreak.&nbsp;

Michael Zauner

Iris Abols

Kat Cattaneo

Relentless Records

OB Management

Singer-songwriter

Tom Walker 'Wait For You' by Chris Ullens

Tom-Walker-'Wait-For-You'-by-Chris-Ullens

Chris Ullens directs a hand-drawn animated video for Alexander 23's IDK You Yet.&nbsp;A poetic visual interpretation of the track's themes, the concept is pared-back and reminiscent of early animation. Rough pencil sketches intertwine with experimental crayon drawings, creating a contemporary aesthetic with an experimental edge, made possible by the team of animators and their own unique styles.&nbsp;Switching up in pace and technique at regular intervals, the video is a beautiful accompaniment to the track, and a poignant exploration of how we communicate with each other when we can't be together.&nbsp;&nbsp;

United States

Interscope Records

Rory Waudby-Tolley

Emily Downe

Alexander 23 'IDK You Yet' by Chris Ullens

Alexander-23-'Idk-You-Yet'-by-Chris-Ullens

This wonderful video by Chris Ullens for country star Lee Ann Womack brings the&nbsp;story of a crumbling relationship to life in a way that&#39;s both familiar and new: stop motion animation meets live action to quite brilliant effect.It&#39;s a couple - Lee Ann and her narcissistic boyfriend - on a road trip through iconic California, a series of motels and car journeys&nbsp;as he seeks fame and she provides selfless support. The brilliant conceit is that this believable world is created through a combination of puppets, miniature models and real locations, rear-projected and edited with a level of craft that blurs the lines between live action and animation.Ullens has so much experience as a stop motion animator, and a storyteller and its really demonstrated here. It&#39;s one of the best things he&#39;s ever made.&nbsp;

The Joy Of Sets

CHEAT

Aaron Lampert

Ato Records

Country

Lee Ann Womack 'Hollywood' by Chris Ullens

Lee-Ann-Womack-'Hollywood'-by-Chris-Ullens

Miniature Rex and Benny chill and perform together in stop-motion from their dreamy living room that comes to life to the sound of their tune Loving Is Easy, in Chris Ullens&#39;s latest animation.

Jack Needell

Feed Me Light

Bruce

Will Hooper

Rex Orange County ft Benny Sings 'Loving Is Easy' by Chris Ullens

Rex-Orange-County-'Loving-Is-Easy'-by-Chris-Ullens

Hell hath no fury&hellip; like a Fergie scorned. And in the video for Love Is Blind she takes maximum retribution on her lovers&#39; wayward behaviour - all in candy-coloured stop-motion.Chris Ullens, who once turned <a href="http://www.promonews.tv/videos/2012/10/25/two-fingers-vengeance-rhythm-chris-ullens" target="_blank">a cuddly teddy bear into a homicidal maniac</a>, does a great job with his&nbsp;miniature Fergie. She looks like a doll living in a Barbie-like world - but animated into a character&nbsp;who despatches the men in her life with a cold-eyed&nbsp;smile. And we&#39;re with her all the way.&nbsp;

Fergie

Emily Suvanvej

Rebecca Luff

TenThree

Electric Theatre Collective

William Derella

Fergie 'Love Is Blind' by Chris Ullens

Fergie-'Love-Is-Blind'-by-Chris-Ullens

After making a hard-hitting stop-motion satire on environmental catastrophe created by&nbsp;a Trump-like property developer for <a href="http://promonews.tv/videos/2015/11/13/kill-noise-feat-awolnation-r-city-kill-it-4-kids-chris-ullens" target="_blank">Kill The Noise</a>,&nbsp;Chris Ullens now takes aim at another deserving subject for Zeds Dead &ndash; the&nbsp;over-use of phones and social networking &ndash; and&nbsp;hits the mark once again.Again employing stop motion animation&nbsp;to great effect, Ullens has created a simple yet colourful world of recognisable character types. At first the whole neighbourhood seems to be getting along swimmingly (if inanely), but it&#39;s not long before everyone&#39;s phones causes misery to themselves and others around them.&nbsp;It all looks good online though. That&#39;s&nbsp;the main thing, right?!

Chris & Jade

Cherie Sinclair

Emilie Suvanvej

James Wright

Travis Richel

Deadbeats

Zeds Dead ft. Rivers Cuomo & Pusha T 'Too Young' by Chris Ullens

Zeds-Dead-'Too-Young-(feat.-Rivers-Cuomo-And-Pusha-T)'-by-Chris-Ullens

Chris Ullens has directed this giddy,&nbsp;over-the-top satire for&nbsp;Kill The Noise&#39;s track Kill It 4 The Kids,&nbsp;inspired by&nbsp;a certain American businessman who is running for the 2016&nbsp;presidential election.It sees a perfectly pleasant town get&nbsp;trampled over by the arrival of Tronald Dump, a greedy business executive who instantly sets up Big Evil Corp (the video isn&#39;t aiming for subtlety). Then, he turns the townspeople into&nbsp;crazed&nbsp;consumers by plastering ads all over town. But the job&nbsp;isn&#39;t finished until he has&nbsp;sets up a burger chain, of course...&nbsp;

Sets Appeal

Tine Kluth

Suraya Raja

Caroline Clayton

Noise

Kill The Noise feat. Awolnation & R. City 'Kill It 4 The Kids' by Chris Ullens

Earlier this year Chris Ullens transformed his own Super 8mm holiday movie into a video for <a href="http://www.promonews.tv/videos/2015/02/10/satin-jackets-feat-esser-shine-you-chris-ullens" target="_blank">Satin Jackets</a>. Now he&#39;s&nbsp;done something similar for new artist Izzy Bizu for her track Adam &amp; Eve,&nbsp;capturing a carefree getaway to the English coast by Izzy and her pals.Chris documents the roadtrip to the sunkissed&nbsp;Isle of Wight, holiday house, dancing,&nbsp;sparklers and bonfires &ndash;&nbsp;all shot on genuine Super 8mm by the director and Jamie Durand &ndash;&nbsp;and as with the Satin Jackets vid, augmented by hand-drawn&nbsp;animations by Ullens himself. And it&#39;s interesting how the classic home movie format dovetails with the spirit of the Instagram age.&nbsp;

Katie Coward

Ten Three

Simon Ainge

Studio RM

Vince Ullens

Elizabeth Doonan

Sony Music

Pop, R&B

Soul

Izzy Bizu 'Adam & Eve' by Chris Ullens

Izzy-Bizu--'Adam-&-Eve'-by-Chris-Ullens

Chris Ullens seems to have combined nearly everything&nbsp;he likes in this video for Satin Jackets&#39; Shine On You featuring Esser - a holiday to Italy with his&nbsp;wife&nbsp;Jade Bogue, a Super 8 camera, and (of course, as this is Chris Ullens) rather a lot of frame-by-frame animation.And the result is delightful, because there is nothing quite like&nbsp;the timeless&nbsp;glow of a Kodachrome-captured summer...&nbsp; &nbsp;

Belgium

Fawnda Denham

Eskimo Recordings

Alt-dance, Dance

Satin Jackets Feat. Esser 'Shine On You' by Chris Ullens

Satin-Jackets-Feat.-Esser-'Shine-On-You'-by-Chris-Ullens

Chris Ullens animated&nbsp;the recent <a href="http://www.promonews.tv/videos/2014/02/21/london-grammar-hey-now-chris-ullens" target="_blank">London Grammar video for Hey Now</a> out of string and lighting - a very tricky challenge, but his latest video is a real step into the unknown.Chris&#39;s speciality is stop-motion, and the video for Norwegian trio Atella&#39;s The Monster&nbsp;is his first ever 2D hand-drawn animation. But working&nbsp;closely with co-illustrator&nbsp;Bill Porter,&nbsp;he&#39;s made a wonderful job of the video.&nbsp;It&#39;s a stream&nbsp;of drawings, with colour illustrations overlaid over black and white, that flow between&nbsp;impressionistic images of Atella singer Kristiane Eldnes and&nbsp;scenes from nature&nbsp;taken from existing footage - including man&#39;s monstrous interaction with wildlife.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Norway

Bill Porter

Dace Brakmane

Atella 'The Monster' by Chris Ullens

Atella - The Monster (official video)

London Grammar&#39;s gorgeously atmospheric Hey Now gets an equally gorgeously atmospheric treatment from promo director Chris Ullens.Hugely watchable, a&nbsp;forest comes alive at night courtesy of some tasty animation and VFX, and as the track escalates, string artist&nbsp;Sebastien Preschoux unveils a stunning display of his craft as balls of string and light play amongst the trees...

Sebastien Preschoux

Cadi Catlow

Ben Magahy

Ciaran Beale

Holborn Studios

Denny Cooper

James Dooley

Jonathan Hicks

Andy Barnard

 Carl Grinter

Ministry of Sound

Electronica

London Grammar 'Hey Now' by Chris Ullens

London Grammar - Hey Now  (Official Video)

&nbsp;&nbsp;Chris Ullens follows up his stop motion wonder for <a href="http://www.promonews.tv/2012/04/23/slugabed-sex-by-chris-ullens/" target="_blank">Slugabed&#39;s Sex</a> with something significantly more explosive for Amon Tobin&#39;s new guise, Two Fingers. For Slugabed, it was simply fruit and veg getting maimed, but in Vengeance Rhythm we&#39;re witness to a brutal killing spree of cuddly proportions that&#39;s as horrific as it is entertaining.Our maleficent anti-hero hunts down even the cutest of children&#39;s room toys and no doll is safe. It&#39;s tip-top stop motion throughout (blood and guts everywhere) but it&#39;s the slow motion exploding Barbie that will leave you reeling. Just in time for Halloween, these furry kills match even the darkest slasher flicks!Chris: &quot;For budget reasons, we transformed my living room into this kids room gore fest for a week. It was non-stop, we had all our meals next to the bloody set, so eating pizzas while looking at it all, it was a real full on immersion into the mood of the job. Of course, as we couldn&#39;t afford more than a week of set, the shoot was a classical stop frame music video shoot with long, long nights that end up confounding themselves with the following mornings and so on for a week, weekend included. By the end, I was dreaming stop frame animated teddy kills and felt like I had taken 10 years in a week, as we were animating on the floor! &quot;And in the middle of it all, we had a very cool slow-motion shoot day. The pyrotechnician from Arcadia SFX is the guy who did the SFX for the last Rambo film... that was a very good start! And then we had Stephen from Love Hi Speed to record it all, so the day was a really funny one, the whole team all had a great laugh, so much so, that we had to pay for a repaint of the whole studio, as there were blood and guts from the floor to the walls and all over the ceiling.... great!&quot;http://youtu.be/TN1BN4keamc

Ned Al-Astrabadi

Adam Farley

Two Fingers 'Vengeance Rhythm' by Chris Ullens

A juicy video for Ninja artist Slugabed's Sex by Chris Ullens - featuring Slugabed's Turbo Juicer 4000.
The video takes the form of a retro infomercial which demonstrates how the Turbo Juicer turns crushed audio-tapes into the best juice you've ever tasted, via a complicated yet delightful (stop-frame animated) process...
"Martin and Gregg (Slugabed) approached me with £1900, a great track and a very open mind," explains Chris. "With the cool track they had, very upbeat and built with loops, I saw the possibility to go crazy with the animation and do something I've been wanting to make for a while, so my treatment was over the top ambitious. We all loved it and that led me into shooting for seven weeks, including Saturdays, many Sundays and a lot of nights on my own. It was epic, but I'm definitely happy now!"

http://www.youtube.com/watchv=o2Ddzd1L2tE&amp;list=FLEXRv_qihRwjsV91ftx23-A&amp;index=1&amp;feature=plcp

Martin Dobson

Slugabed 'Sex' by Chris Ullens

Slugabed-'Sex'-by-Chris-Ullens

Promonews Podcast

Chris Ullens

Director

Videos featuring Chris Ullens

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