David Knight - 11th Apr 2018

Najeeb Tarazi, formerly technical director at Pixar and director of impressive animated videos for Hippo Campus and Delta Heavy in the past year or so, now embraces live action with a graphic dimension with this excellent piece for Gaz Coombes, inspired by David Hockney's Polaroid photo collages.

The drama of a poker game in an LA apartment is played out through fragmented images within the same frame, manipulating the passage of time, character development and action. As such, Tarazi's video for Walk The Walk  becomes a kind of hybrid of a film and a storyboard or comic book.

Through his innovative techniques the viewer finds out more about what is really going on in this poker game, where some players are bound to win. Meanwhile Gaz Coombes also cameos, sporting a very LA-period Hockney look (his new album The World's Strongest Man also has a very Hockney-esque cover). It's beautifully done, with enthralling results.

NAJEEB TARAZI:

“When I heard Walk The Walk and heard about Gaz finding inspiration in David Hockney’s work, I was reminded of Hockney’s classic photo collages. The video for Walk The Walk uses a poker game as the setting for a series of experimental video collages shot in a mid-century modern apartment in Los Angeles.

"We had a great time figuring out how to make the technique work and I’m super grateful that Gaz wanted to take a chance on unusual visuals for his fantastic music.”