Shrine features the character illustrations of Stacey Rozich. Artfully lit and animated by Pecknold with additional animation from Britta Johnson. The theme of the song is a painful break-up. Gorgeously cinematic—the characteristic soft primal colors, avant garde lighting, bold archetypal imagery and subtle animation communicate the song’s psychology of the heart, its life and death, into a vivid and inscrutable dream.
Sean graciously gives us an interview about the equally epic making of.
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We started talking about the concept in January. I wrote the story in February, Stacey illustrated some of the characters in March. In April we moved to a small studio in Portland, Oregon and got to work creating the puppets, the animation table, and building the sets. Animation started in May and continued until early October. Spent a couple weeks finishing with After Effects, color, some pickup shots etc, then delivered end of October. Wow that really did take a long time.
It was a small crew—I directed, lit, animated, and edited. Britta Johnson helped construct puppets, paint sets and animated. Stacey Rozich illustrated the characters, and Natalie Jenkins helped construct all the puppets as well as painted many of the set pieces.
We used Dragonframe the entire 6 months of animating, night and day. It didn’t even blink an eye. We used the new drawing tools to mark out animations, and the line-up layer was invaluable as always, allowing us to bring the animatic in and mark out our timings. It was actually my first production using a Canon camera with Dragonframe and I was kind of blown away at how much better it is, the live preview image is big and clear, and it never overheats.
It was a challenging production because of the length of the song, and the amount of characters we have in the video, and just staying focused on the big picture, while spending so much time on the little details. We invested wisely in a baking rack that we used to store all the bits and pieces, characters, and sets.
It was the longest project I’ve ever worked on in the animation world. It was an amazing experience, and all the easier because of Dragonframe. Thanks guys.
Thank you, Sean! Can’t wait to see what you bake up next.
Credits:
Music: Fleet Foxes
Album: Helplessness Blues
Director: Sean Pecknold
Animators: Sean Pecknold & Britta Johnson
Character Illustrations: Stacey Rozich
Art Assistant: Natalie Jenkins
Producer: Aaron Ball
Multiplane: Greg Pecknold
Post/Edit : Sean Pecknold
Particle FX: Britta Johnson
AE Assist: Austin Wilson
Sound FX: Shervin Shaeri
Story: Sean Pecknold
Labels: Bella Union & Sub Pop
Made in Portland, Oregon
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Made with Dragonframe