When successful British dance music producer Paul Woolford wanted a lyric video for his track ‘Hang Up Your Hangups' (CamelPhat Remix) he knew just where to turn. Trunk Animation, who are masters of the art, having created lyric videos for The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and Kylie Minogue to name drop just a few, came up with a great concept for the track.
Trunk’s director Layla Atkinson notes, “The track has two distinct moods, before and after the drop. I wanted to visually mirror that audio break using imagery and colour. Before the drop I used and manipulated black and white stock footage, that was very mechanical and structured, over which I placed very colourful lyrics. After the drop I sourced beautiful natural landscape imagery that did not contain any man made structures over which white lyrics were placed.”
The effect creates a stunning visual break that reinforces the tracks mood and message. The coloured lyrics pre-announce the direction of the track giving voice to the individual trapped in the confines of the modern world before, finally, they break out into the freedom and beauty of the natural world. Suspended shapes play inverted, reduced or mirrored counterpoints to the main visual, creating a trippy, stately effect that matches the power of the track.
The tight set of lyrics also allowed Layla to spend a great deal of time creating each word by hand. The scalpel and cutting mat were dragged out of the cupboard and each line was turned into a stencil. Layla then sponged paint through the stencil creating many copies of each word. These copies were then looped, resulting in the finished, uniquely colourful lyrics.
As Trunk producer Richard Barnett notes, 'As always it was great to work with the commissioning team at Warner's, and lovely to create another vid that gets you out from behind the computer!
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