Surreal set design and ace direction for new Air spin-off project vid

Date
5 June 2015

“When I first heard this song, I was like: Whuuuuuuuuu…. this rules. Then I listened to it for a few days on repeat with my eyes closed,” says director Sean Pecknold of his brilliant new video for one-half-of-Air Nicolas Godin’s new release.

The video is a glorious melange of surreal live footage, shots of cats cradles that could come from a BBC learning programme and brightly coloured animation, leaning towards a delicious 80s vibe. “The graphics were meant to be simple, inspired by the 8-bit sound of some of the synth instruments in the song,” Sean explains. “We looked at the graphics in a lot of old video games from the late 80s and early 90s as well as early experimental film work by Richard Bailey and John Whitney.”

Alongside these references, Nicolas’ background in architecture also fed into the aesthetics for the song and its video. Le Corbusier joined a diverse list of inspirations including the work of Bach, and this single, Orca, is in fact a reworking of Bach’s Prelude & Fugue N°3 in C # Major. High-minded starting points have lost any air (ahem) of pretension though, thanks to Sean’s directorial magic, art director Adi Goodrich’s sweet graphic shapes and some brilliant work with ping pong balls.

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Sean Pecknold and Adi Goodrich: Nicolas Godin’s Orca (still)

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Sean Pecknold and Adi Goodrich: Nicolas Godin’s Orca (still)

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Sean Pecknold and Adi Goodrich: Nicolas Godin’s Orca (still)

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Sean Pecknold and Adi Goodrich: Nicolas Godin’s Orca (still)

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Sean Pecknold and Adi Goodrich: Nicolas Godin’s Orca (still)

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Sean Pecknold and Adi Goodrich: Nicolas Godin’s Orca (still)

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Sean Pecknold and Adi Goodrich: Nicolas Godin’s Orca (still)

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About the Author

Emily Gosling

Emily joined It’s Nice That as Online Editor in the summer of 2014 after four years at Design Week. She is particularly interested in graphic design, branding and music. After working It's Nice That as both Online Editor and Deputy Editor, Emily left the company in 2016.

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