One of the most exciting things about moving to New York was reconnecting with Matthew Dear for his upcoming album Black City. Getting to work with his art director Will Calcutt has been an inspiration and has really opened up my eyes to a fresh new ideas and visions.

To promote the album and the following tour, Will had the idea of developing an ongoing series of beautiful and abstract imagery, all viewable on a single portal, that could represent the various aspects of the album.

So over the past few months Will has developed a single look for all the videos, following a very specific technique that processes regular-looking footage into breathtaking art, giving everything a vintage feel that is reminiscent of film experiments from the 1920s. But he takes this all a step further by morphing and time-stretching the footage using some pretty modern-day technology, generating some of the starkest imagery that most people will find difficult to categorize.

So for the launch of the campaign Will got me involved in making the trailer, a teaser of what is to come over the next few weeks. We spent the whole weekend in his office in Dumbo filming a whole bunch of different things, which I then edited and passed onto him for him to pass it through his mysterious box of magic tricks. Oh, before the edit I actually started off by mixing Matthew’s tracks into a single score.

In the last few scenes you can see my eye, which we filmed while projecting my enemies animation using a macro lens on a Canon 5D mkII.

Keep an eye out on Matthew Dear’s website over the next few weeks for more beautiful work by Will: www.matthewdear.com

Links:
-Matthew Dear
-Will Calcutt portfolio
-Will Calcutt on Ghostly Int