As you may recall, Michel met Cody ChesnuTT during the filming of Dave Chappelle's Block Party, and henceforth wanted to do a video with him. The song is directly lifted from Block Party footage, and unrelated to any ChesnuTT release. No word yet on if it will be on the Block Party DVD, which is released 13 June in America. Watch the video here.
The video features more of Michel's animated drawings, as seen in his auto-documentary I've Been Twelve Forever, on his DLabel DVD. This time they've been caressed into gentle, colorized 3-D by the workers at The Mill NY.
Says The Millians:
"Using a single sheet of paper and a bolex camera, Michel drew images a line at a time and photographed the progression so that when played back, the images looked like they were drawing themselves. [Creative Director] Angus [Kneale] then took these images and built layers to create a dimensional quality, so the drawings could be rotated and shifted accentuating and echoing the original image spatially and temporally. Once Michel was satisfied with The Mill's tests he continued to draw more graphics that reflected the music's themes of brotherhood, such as abstract images, interesting figures and captivating street scenes.
"The project was then turned over to lead Flame Operator Westley Sarokin who adapted the pipeline on a shot by shot basis, composing camera moves and adding a striking color correction. In a similar but more complex version of adjusting the negative in standard film, Westley turned the positive aspects of the images into negative and then, isolating particular colors, he mixed the texture back through from original passes. The joy was in the development, as Westley and Michel would play with the film until they found the right look.
"In a true collaborative effort, the artists created a pipeline that evolved each time a new piece of material came into The Mill. First Michel shot and developed the film each night. By morning, The Mill team had a tape in hand and would be dimensionalizing Michel's drawings, handing it off to Jeff Buchanan, the editor."
