Em Cooper's dreamy Beatles classic

Following last Friday’s release of Revolver Special Edition, The Beatles have premiered a brand new video for I’m Only Sleeping, directed by Emmy-nominated Jelly director Em Cooper. 

This whimsical, painterly animation illustrates band member John Lennon as he drifts in and out of a deep, nostalgic sleep. Liquescent imagery recollecting the band’s most iconic moments melts and merges with faces, places, and bedsheets to effortlessly capture the hazy space between Lennon’s dreaming and waking. 

Painting with a limited colour palette of oils onto a clear celluloid sheet, Cooper created one-thousand, three-hundred impermanent artworks which were photographed then wiped away.

The viscous nature of the medium naturally lends itself to animating a fluid dreamscape which perfectly parallels the sound of the Beatles' track, each painting representing less than a split second of the director's otherworldly labour of love. 

“It was a project that I felt an immediate spark for right from the word go, and somehow that momentum carried me right through to the end,” Cooper explained. “I love The Beatles. We used to listen to this song on tape in the car when I was a child, and the song itself evokes such a mesmerising, languid, dreamy state, in a way my job was only to follow its lead with a paintbrush in my hand.”