Music videos are not the sales machines they once were. Record companies frequently balk at spending tens of thousands of dollars on a video, so the medium has welcomed a more traditional funding source: patronage. The Medicis of this music video were the PF Flyers shoe company, which gave twelve thousand dollars to director Stefan Nadelman to produce an animated music video for Menomena’s song “Evil Bee.” PF Flyers had the right to host the video on its website, exclusively, for a month. The shoes appeared nowhere in the video.
Nadelman made this animation almost entirely by himself. He spent three months building and photographing models, roto-scoping the photographs into manipulatable elements, and animating those images.
This is an installment of Creative Accounting, an ongoing series that explains where the money goes for projects in the major creative industries. Future issues will cover publishing, television, and fine art. Very soon the series will be collected into a single, indispensable volume, published by Believer Books.
—Christopher Benz
Nadelman commissioned sculptor Kimi Kaplowitz.
Forces of Valor German Tiger 1, cannibalized for treads
Brent Knopf, one third of Menomena, came up with the concept for the video in college. He handed Nadelman his notes and a box of props, including two night lights.
Nadelman used his tools from home.
A neighbor’s yard provided the flowers.
Tiny seeds doubled as larvae.
Used to create bird’s eye details
Engraving a hexagon on a pint glass
Expenses for the full three months of the project
Animator Adam Levine photographed and rotoscoped a gravity conveyor for his friend.
Animator Eric Gorski spent a day rotoscoping different angles of shredded bee pieces. Rotoscoping is the process of translating a live object into an animated image. Pre-digital animators would project a film onto a drawing board and trace each frame. For this project, rotoscoping meant having photos of the models from every conceivable angle and lighting, then using Photoshop to isolate these images from their backgrounds.
Nadelman worked about 660 hours on the project. He built, rotoscoped, and animated as he went. Ten percent of his time went to actual filming. Subtracting the $1,915.09 production expenses, he made $10,084.91 in three months, or $15.28 an hour.
Back to previous
In a ceremony held at the East Room on Tuesday, President Joe Biden presented the prestigious 2021 National Medals of……
The mental health of young social media users, especially young women, is increasingly becoming a topic of concern. With the……
Bandai Namco has recently shared an intriguing infographic in celebration of the first anniversary of Elden Ring, the tough-as-nails action/RPG……
