Exclusive: "Making Of" Video For Kutiman's Latest Music Video

YouTube mash-up master Kutiman recently tried his hand at directing a music video for Israeli band Boom Pam‘s song “Light Up.” In the video, he employed stop-motion techniques, lending the video a lo-fi aesthetic in contrast to the highly polished look of computer generated imagery. Cutting out cardboard shapes and using different textures like coins and felt was part of the appeal to Kutiman—he was enamored with the physicality of it. The resulting video features a cavalcade of shapes parading across the face of band member Uri Brauner Kinrot and is reminiscent of Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” video.

As a musician who utilizes the resources of the web in the creation of his work—for instance his famed crowd-sourced Thru-You series—Kutiman recently released the “making of video,” riding on the principle of “sharing is caring” that keeps the internet’s creativity churning. It all looked like a whole lot of fun with a casual, experimental approach to its construction.

“It was like going back to kindergarten,” Kutiman said. “I had the idea for a while, I had this idea of putting the video frame by frame on the computer and then projecting each frame and doing stop-motion on top of it and seeing what would happen. We played around with it and didn’t think about how it would work out or do any storyboard or anything. It took six months but it was really nice to work on. We just jammed.”

In all fairness, the six month timeframe was because Kutiman was working on other projects as well, but taking the time to iterate and experiment in different forms is something he does a lot of. “[Video directing is] not something I do every day, but every once in awhile I hear a song and I say ‘wow, I have an idea for this song,’ so I do a video. For instance, today I am a musician but tomorrow I am remixing something or doing a video, or just trying something else. I like to experiment with all different mediums.”

Check out the video below and the “making of” above and keep a look out for Kutiman’s next project, a crowd-sourced YouTube cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog”.