With some scenes you interpret the lyrics quite literally while others are more metaphorical – how did the narrative evolve?

I wanted to imagine what kind of party would give you “Post Party Stress Disorder”.
I felt like it should be quite dark and surreal but also true to the upbeat dance nature of the track.
So this developed into the idea of a guy who arrives at a party where crazy surreal stuff is going on, and people are distorting in bizarre ways. Like a bad dream.
At first he’s immune to it but then he slowly gives in to the darkness and gets distorted himself.
But hey – the dark side actually helps him find his mega-dance-grooviness in the end, so it’s a bizarre happy ending…

What was behind your decision to use animation?

The minute I heard the song, this surreal bad dream imagery popped into my head, and it seemed to translate better via hand-drawn 2D animation rather than live action.
I immediately thought of brilliant London animator Joseph Pierce as I’m a huge fan of his short films, and their disturbing yet sensitive vibe.
So I contacted him and he was really into the idea of collaborating…

Can you talk us through the process please – was it all CGI?

The process was really interesting. This was close to a NO-budget, so we had to be really smart and resourceful.
First I did a very lo-fi shoot with the main character. Olivier Casamayou of I Could Never Be a Dancer agreed to choreograph and perform which was massive as his moves really make the end of the video.
To give you an idea of how lo-fi the shoot was, it was a one man crew of me myself and I, and the only camera I could afford was….. my iPad.

At what point was it edited – did that happen concurrently with the animation?

Paul Hardcastle @ Trim and I then composited the footage of Olivier into found party footage, and we edited it into a live version of the video. So this was basically like a live action “animatic” of the promo, which included everything but the animation. I then handed the live edit over to Joseph and he rotoscoped it to create the 2000 amazing stills we needed for a three-minute video – adding all the distortions and random oddities. This took close to 10 weeks!

Ultimately this process was born out of necessity and budget restrictions, but it worked out great, and it gave the video its surprising aesthetic of loosely surreal imagery combined with distinctly realistic motion.

View production stills in Related Content