Looking Back: Day 4

Everyday of the week leading to the release of our new album, CARTOGRAPHY, we'll be streaming different UNreleased songs spanning the entire life of the band. The songs will only be up this week.


Today's entry is spotlighting the various claymation projects Sam had and the band helped out it with.




Century Paul
This was my first claymation where I really had freedom over what the
story was about. Because we were working with a very
short period of time, I wanted to have images that told a story by
themselves. A two-headed monster holding a gun, with one head shot
off instantly creates a narrative. I liked the imagery of the plant growing
in his head throughout the different stages, but looking back at it I
wish I had more time to work on these images. The whole thing was
filmed in a long weekend if I recall.


Stonefish
For Stonefish we really wanted to have fun pushing our boundaries of
what we could build and film. I'm really pleased with how all the sets
looked in the end. In this project I might have got myself into a bit
of trouble trying to come up with ways to tell a long story in a short
amount of time.The one scene I'm still very happy with is the
opening shot. We wanted to try a longer shot that slowly revealed one
element at a time to show what had happened, and I think it turned out well.
The Restoration - A Film by Sam Ward from Paul Hoppe on Vimeo.

RestorationFor Restoration I wanted to overcome a lot of the disappointments I
had with Stonefish. I wanted a clear stand-alone story that played off
the audiences understandings of classic genres. I'm still happy with
this one because even if the back story isn't clear, it's still a good old
western shootout with cool music.


- Sam