Monday, September 05, 2011

These little piggies went back to the start...

The following is an ad. If you can overcome cynicism long enough to watch it until its final frames when the sponsor's name appears, I think you'll be able to concentrate on kvelling over the marvelous animation.



The soundtrack is Willie Nelson covering Coldplay's The Scientist, although I have to say I couldn't tell his treatment from theirs. The theme is a farmer moving from traditional to intensive farming methods, and after a while realizing no-one is benefiting - himself, his customers or his livestock - and so he goes back to the start. The commentariat at YouTube is particularly scathing about this ad, as getting emotional over this little fictional story doesn't actually mean you're doing anything about factory farming, but I reckon as long as you bear that in mind while watching, no harm done.

And the animation, by London's Johnny Kelly, is as I said, superb. There's a making-of video available here [link partially broken]. It really is stop motion, using molded and even three-d printed characters arranged on a long, long table so the video looks like one extended tracking shot. It works perfectly with the song. Logically, a linear tracking shot implies time passing as well as geographical space passing, and by definition you can't get 'back to the start', but in this treatment, the story is told in such a way that the time paradox adds to the experience rather than nullifying it. Nice video.

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I sometimes mention a product on this blog, and I give a URL to Amazon or similar sites. Just to reassure you, I don't get paid to advertise anything here and I don't get any money from your clicks. Everything I say here is because I feel like saying it.