In 1991 I moved to the small Swedish town where I live now, Älvkarleby. It´s close to Gävle, a bigger town. In 1998 they built a blue concert hall there and at that time they had a music library there. One of the first records I borrowed was with an Irish band called Kíla.
Many years later, in 2014 I had the pleasure of making the animated video for ”Suas Síos”, the 10th album from Kila. I made it in a style I never used before, a silhouette style with flat colors and textures from stencils made by Simon Bolger for the album booklet.
Kila sings in Irish so I hardly knew what the lyrics were about. But getting to know the the music better I found a story that I and Kila liked.
A few months ago Colm O’ Snodaigh from Kila asked me if I wanted to make a second video from the album. The track was ”Am” and he gave me a short description of what it was about. It was something about keep your feet on the ground.
The track was more than 5 minutes so I needed to find a story that worked the whole way.
After much thinking I remembered an old drawing I made 30 years ago. It was made privately but I sold it to a magazine about the building industry and made a color version of it. It´s called ”a society is built”.
For some reason that drawing has stayed in my memory and it is an idea that still grows.
I used a similar graphic style in this video as in the first one. Often you don´t know how everything will look when you start. First I timed the track into sequences and tried to find a structure. For some parts you find ideas easy but sometimes it could be very hard. There are many things to think of in the storytelling.
The video should not take too much attention from the music. Still it is a visual story that needs focus.
It´s an up-and-down creative process where you want to tell a story but not too much. In this case with ”Am” the hardest thing was to tell the story of that single image. To keep the same idea and to put the same question in the head of the viewer.
As always it´s the end that is the hardest. But finally I think I found a way that worked quite well.
Have a look at the video and see if you think the same.
