Ghoste in the machine

This new video for Floridian rapper, singer and songwriter Ghostmane is a brilliantly dark, creepy tale of what happens when you have a bad trip while watching old-style cartoons.

The promo is directed by Nick Cinelli through Studio Linguini, and animated by Venturia Animation Studios. Cinelli, who picked up a Young Director Award in 2019, about which he spoke to shots earlier this year, explains the concept behind the video; "The idea for AI came about through a conversation with Jon Tanners, Ghoste's manager. We were chatting about an idea he had been mulling over about cartoons escaping the television and how to extrapolate on that. If you remember, at the beginning of apocalyptic 2020, murder hornets were actually a thing, so that was on our minds. Ghoste was also looking to do a video loosely exploring his childhood home and the emotional and creative release he was seeking before leaving Florida. It was really a synthesis of all these ideas that boiled down to what you see in AI.

"The bees provided a great segue between a kind of occultism, and this old Fleischer Bros cartoon style. As Studio Linguini has a strong grasp of stop-motion, we decided to experiment with bringing this 2D world to life, inside a stop-motion environment. A little bit apparition, a little bit PCP trip, we decided that was a great direction to go."