Mastercraft

Sunny is a small traditional bakery, from pralines to wedding cakes, everything is lovingly handmade. But when suddenly a factory opens next to him that can produce baked goods much faster and cheaper, the seemingly hopeless competition begins.

This stop-motion music video (4 min.) was produced as a semester project by a team of five. I was responsible for the story development, 3D animatic production, stop-motion animation as well as the post-production.

The song "Mastercraft" by the Lebanese rock band "Who Killed Bruce Lee" is about the loss of traditional craftsmanship. Of course we wanted to address this topic in the music video, but we also wanted to avoid relying too much on the lyrics. Instead, we decided to take a broader interpretation by introducing two contrasting but likeable characters: Sunny the bakery and GoodBite the factory

Pre-production began in March 2016. Since traditional craftsmanship is mostly done by hand, we couldn't resist creating a stop-motion video. Our story just demanded this particular film technique!

To get an overview of the production cost and time, we almost immediately created a 3D animated version of the video. Since I was in charge of the pre-visualization, I started by creating a virtual clone of the film set in Autodesk Maya. Even here you can find the contrast between tradition and modernity!

After a few iterations, the animatic was complete, and we knew what assets were needed. But first, we had to figure out how pop-up books work...

Each team member was assigned their own design project. We all worked very hard to create detailed, yet sturdy papercrafts that could survive for weeks without any visual wear and tear. Not an easy task, as everything had to be suitable for animation.

The animation took three months. We didn't see much sun that summer. Our studio setup consisted of small dedolights, a softbox, and a Canon DSLR connected to an iMac with Dragonframe. However, sometimes there is no suitable equipment for your purpose, that's when you have to get creative!

It's the end of October, almost eight months have passed since our first meeting. Now all we had to do was transform our 3000 photos into a motion picture. After final editing in Premiere, our music video was ready for the real premiere!