Fleet Foxes take flight

Fleet Foxes – Featherweight

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Production Company SingSing
Director Sean Pecknold

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Credits

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Production Company SingSing
Director Sean Pecknold
Colorist Kaitlyn Battistelli
Copywriter Sean Pecknold
Animator Eileen Kohlhepp
Producer Sean Pecknold
DP Sean Pecknold
Animator Sean Pecknold

Editor/VFX Artist Sean Pecknold

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For the Fleet Foxes’ latest single, Featherweight, director Sean Pecknold has crafted a world of struggle and hope brought to life using stop-motion animation and a multiplane camera.

Produced through Sing Sing Milan, the evocative and visually striking film follows a young hawk as he struggles to fly with a broken wing. We witness the animal's successes and failures and the second chances that life sometimes offers, even when all seems lost. The video premiered on this week at the GRAMMY Museum as part of a retrospective featuring Fleet Foxes’ music videos, with a conversation between Sean and his brother, Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold.

To bring Featherweight to life, Pecknold joined forces with animator Eileen Kohlhepp. “Eileen has an incredible attention to detail and ended up bringing the characters to life in a way I could never have done by myself,” said Pecknold.

Above: The making of Featherweight.

Ultimately the message of the piece is what resonates with those who helped make it. “I think we all go through these journeys where we feel like we’re broken but we keep pushing forward," says Kohlhepp. "When the hawk’s at the point where he’s the most exhausted, and he’s almost given up, is when he allows someone else to help him so he can continue on. It’s good to be open to the help of others, cause we can’t do it by ourselves. In my twenty years as an animator, it's an extremely rare opportunity to work on a project as poetic as Featherweight.”