Little Fishes (Creature Fear Music Video)

Being a creative can be pretty difficult sometimes. Especially when you need to support yourself financially through what you love. It can often turn into a love hate relationship and you can start resenting the thing you adore the most. Despite this struggle, the passion for it always wins when you realise it fuels you, makes you happy and feel alive. When COVID hit, our relationship with creativity had to change drastically and move quickly with the volatile environment we were all thrown into.

When we were put into Melbourne/Victorian lockdown we were devastated. We are full time creatives and with the heavy restrictions and rules all of our plans were stopped in their tracks. Curfew, 5+ km radius restriction, time limits on how long you could leave the house, masks worn at all times and more.

Even though the world had stopped, we had projects that needed to get done. One of the most pressing deadlines was a music video for the band Creature Fear (Cams Band). We had previously made several music videos for the band, but with the restrictions in place and them not being able to physically get together, there was no way we could make one like we had in the past. We had been planning the original concept for several months and were a few weeks off shooting but inevitably had to cancel everything. We felt completely defeated and deflated, but then the idea of making an animation was suggested.

Jason (band guitarist) had previously suggested an animation but it seemed like something so out of reach. We had never attempted an animation before and didn’t really know where to start. With not many options and lots of extra time on our hands we started brainstorming. We originally thought of attempting the animation on an app or computer program. With some research and investigation we didn’t find anything that really grabbed our attention or anything that we could afford. We also considered reaching out to professional animators, but once again we had $0 budget and a pressing deadline.

Once we realised how minimal our options were, we decided to bite the bullet and take it into our own hands. We were quite intimidated by the task and had no idea if we would be able to pull it off. With absolutely no experience in animation between us, we tried not to think about the enormity of the project and just took it step by step. Looking back we still can’t believe how crazy we were to even attempt it. We took inspiration from the single cover art work and used that as our start point.

We did some trial sketches and started thinking about the ‘scenes’ that we wanted in the video. We based the ideas off the individual band members. We brainstormed activities that we thought they could all be doing in their scene inspired by their hobbies/jobs/past adventures and used it as a starting point.

Jacqui is a singing teacher, Jason has worked as a piano mover, Larni has 2 rabbits, Jack enjoys cooking and we wanted to make Cam the one who gets hit in the face with a fish as a clear introduction of the fish theme. We took these ideas and twisted them with our silly sense of humour to involve the fish.

Once we had the base ideas of the scenes, we created a little work space with books, shoes, crates and a plank of wood from the garden to prop up a ring light. We then taped an iPhone into place above a large white note book which became the background.

Before we started each scene, we would plan out the general beats and flow of the section/story. We made a little check list each morning of all the moving parts needed for each scene. First we’d spend hours drawing and cutting out each piece individually by hand. Cam drew the people, and I drew the animals and the background/furniture. Each morning we would wake up and get started at 10am to finish around 11pm each night.

Once we had a plan and all the pieces we needed, we moved over to the workspace and got ready to start. We placed the pieces on the notebook and with each picture we took we moved every individual piece on the page to give animation more life. No piece was unmoved. Then we slowly played out the scene by removing and placing pieces on the page. We were very aware of trying to make the mechanics of the movements consistent and realistic.

Through out the project we definitely became more confident with the process and how we attacked each scene. We found it was the little details that really helped bring it to life. As we played the scenes out, we found little moments and details we could add to heighten each scene. We have a very similar goofy sense of humour so we had a lot of giggles together when we found funny little moments.

We then finished the video by compiling all the still images together on the computer. Once the visual story was completed with the song, we recorded seagull, wind, water and fish sounds into our phone with our voices and added them to the end.

The project took a week to complete, 50+ hours, 2500 final still frames (after editing/cutting), and hundreds of individual cut out pieces and character pictures on our floors. Our backs did not thank us for all the time we were hunched over and our hands were not happy with the work we made them do. We found our hands cramped each day from cutting so long with our legs going numb from all the sitting. But it was all worth it.

There were times when we seriously questioned our sanity and what we were doing. But we pushed ourselves through our doubts and found ourselves on the other side of it with a project that we are incredibly proud of.

We hope you enjoy!

Amy & Cam