The Heavy – Can’t Play Dead
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After seeing the “Halloween” stop motion short that I shot with my iPhone, British rock & soul band The Heavy hired me to direct a full-blown stop motion video for their song “Can’t Play Dead”, the track that opens their album The Glorious Dead.
The song’s ghoulish subject matter and creepy aural vibe suggested a kind of B-Movie storyline to me, so I scripted up a series of scenes juxtaposing a slew of spooky goings-on featuring the main female character, while my stop-motion Heavy doppelgangers hang out in the underworld and bang out the tune.
From top to bottom, this video was a tremendously good time to make.
Some articles and press:
• Entertainment Weekly
• FearNet
• Flux Magazine
• Bloody Disgusting
Special thanks to Julian Clark Studios for their fantastic armatures.
Above: Selected setup and behind-the-scenes images.
Below: Expanded gallery with full-frame example images of each scene.
Via Fearnet:
“Acclaimed UK garage-funk-rock combo The Heavy (whom you probably remember from their runaway hit single ‘How You Like Me Now?’) decided to pay tribute to old-school horror in their new music video for ‘Can’t Play Dead,’ the latest single from their third full-length album The Glorious Dead. Using surreal stop-motion techniques reminiscent of the Brothers Quay with a touch of Tim Burton’s macabre mischief, director Jason Willis created an homage to a half-dozen horror films, including Ed Wood’s Plan Nine from Outer Space, the silent classic Nosferatu, the original Phantasm and even the Brazilian cult classic At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul.”
For even more information (as well as contextual links), please visit my expanded Flickr gallery.
CONTACT JASON WILLIS