Short of the Week
strawberry-swing

Strawberry Swing

Inventive music video for Coldplay featuring lead singer Chris Martin as an explorer of new worlds and realized entirely in drawn chalk animation.

Babelgum, a service I’m not really in love with, has attempted to overcome their clunky interface and low video quality by scoring exclusives. This one, Strawberry Swing is the latest Coldplay video and is directed by Shynola (also known for their title sequence for Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.

The video is pretty cool. It is live action stop-motion from a overhead angle, in the tradition of Sorry I’m Late or the Oren Lavie music video that made such a splash a few months back. By using chalk to imply perspective and sophisticated camera movements, they introduce a three dimensionality to the compositions that is really mindblowing. The technique is still probably a gimmick that will run its course, but now that course looks like it could be much longer.

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By
Sondhi approaches films from the perspective of an uber-fan, knowledgeable film academic, and occasional filmmaker. His tendency to over-think his film criticisms is due to a background in Philosophy, but he is putting useless intellectualizing aside for this site.
  • http://www.polymixmedia.com Andrew S Allen

    That’s damn impressive. Director, Chris Martin, actually painfully posed for all those hours and hours of shooting. I agree that this video definitely takes the technique we saw pioneered in Sorry I’m Late to a new (3D) level. Though I wonder what influence Sorry I’m Late had for Shynola as there certainly seem to be a few suspiciously similar elements (eg. umbrella, underwater).