Gayle ft Blackbear 'fmk' by Chris Ullens
David Knight - 26th Sept 2022
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 ways in which they dispatch each other on a daily basis.
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 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 involving a psychopathic teddybear.
This is rather more playful - as the animation was created with a series of non-moving 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...
David Knight - 26th Sept 2022
Credits
Featured here in the credits?
Production/Creative
- Director
- Chris Ullens
- Producer
- Jade Bogue
Camera
- Director of Photography
- Jamie Durand
Lighting/Grip
- Gaffer
- Jamie Durand
Art
- Art Director
- Brin Frost
- Production designer
- Brin Frost
- Lead Model Maker
- Beattie Fartley
- Model Makers
- Connor Chung, Rosie Tonkin
Animation
- Animation Director
- Chris Ullens
- Animator
- Chris Ullens
Editorial
- Editor
- Chris Ullens
Grading
- Colourist
- Matthew James Day
Agent
- Director's Representation
- Friends Electric
Commission
- Commissioner
- Trevor Joseph Newton
- Label
- Atlantic Records
David Knight - 26th Sept 2022