Spaceships Are Cool
Following the success of the puppetry based music video ‘Hand Up if You’re Lost’ Polymath Pictures was commissioned to make the next official music video for Nottingham band ‘Spaceships Are Cool’.
The brief was quite unique because the band already had a really strong visual aesthetic and even a set of commissioned graphics they wanted to use. As a designer this was fantastic material to work with and really inspiring.
I designed the set to incorporate both the directors treatment needs and the bands artwork. We painstakingly pieced together elements from the artwork on photoshop to create each of the set elements. These were printed onto A4 paper to form a scale model. Each sheet would be scaled up to AO to construct the final set.
My art team included a talented bunch of artists, designers and puppet makers who worked hard to bring the set, puppets and all the props to life. The look of the piece was very ‘hand-made’ and child-like, yet the clean lines of the graphics also required an element of precision and simplicity.
The puppets were constructed by Matt Rolfe and Inma Cook and based on the fantastic character designs by Giraffe City. Simple mechanism were used to make the heads turn and so they could be puppeteered from below.
Props were constructed by Charlotte Ball and Inma Cook including a giant world, moon, spaceship and volcano. Many of these elements were shot against green screen so they could be edited in post.
The set was constructed by Sarah Lewis and Emily Croxford. Boxes were constructed to bespoke sizes and the printed sheets carefully mounted onto each side to create the interior of the spacecraft.