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Where Do We Go
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3 votes)
In this combo live-action/animated indie music video for Scottish-born rocker Ben Jelen's "Where Do We Go," 25-year-old director Sean Donnelly and Indonesian
producer Lydia Budianto -- who make up the New York team, Awesome and Modest -- create a dark and whimsical story of a relationship gone bad.
"I had a roommate once who got an artsy gothic girlfriend," explains Donnelly, who says he's been making videos since the 8th grade. "He would
do anything for her because he was completely in love. He'd drive
her everywhere, help her with any art projects she was working on, and
pay for everything that she wanted. She began to take advantage of
the situation. After not receiving anything in
return for months, the spell was broken and he dumped her. After the
ordeal, he learned the piano right afterwards and wrote a bunch of great sad
songs. I imagine that this song was a product of a similar
relationship." Donnelly envisioned the magic show theme as a way to evoke the relationship of a master magician and his able-bodied assistant.
As for the animated characters, which were created using simple stop-motion techniques, Donnelly says they are a "visualization of her madness, and the things that drive her to treat Ben this way without noticing that his love for her is fading."
"We did it against a green piece of paper so we could key them out in the computer," he explains. "Eric Epstein, our compositor, then tracked them into the real chairs. (He put red stickers on the chairs in real life to help him.) They were all bright white too, so the color corrected them a little to look like they were actually in the environment."
Ironically, the titles and drawings that narrate the story were taken from Donnelly's original "sloppy storyboards he did on the subway," he says. "Ben and his team liked them a lot and wanted them to be in the actual video. So it's kind of like a 'making of' the entire time," he adds. "You get to see the original sketch and idea, and then what became of it."
Donnelly continues to make video and commercial work, but he's also making a feature-length documentary called "I Think We're Alone Now," about two obsessed Tiffany fans. Check out the scary trailer here.
-Anthony Kaufman
Sean Donnelly
Music Video
3:44
$6,000
Singer : Ben Jelen
Woman : Amanda Moore
Lydia Budianto and Jessica Cohen
Sean Donnelly
Jon "Chillah" Chen
Art Director : Janicza Bravo
Animation : Sean Donnelly and Abbey Luck
Costumes : Masha Mand and Carol Miltimore
