Oh Yeah, Wow! A Day In Gotye's Stop Motion Life

As with all Gotye's music videos, the Easy Way Out clip is as much a short film as a music video, and it's another one that demands rewatching again and again, just to see all the small details and admire the sheer hard work. I'm sure this clip will enjoy a long and awards-garnished festival life. 

I spoke to Darcy earlier today (who also did the stop motion work on Gotye's Eyes Wide Open music video) and he kindly sent some awesome behind-the-scenes pictures as well as his director's statement, which shows just how keenly Darcy and his team (including Vis FX wizard, Andrew Goldsmith) value the devil in the details. 

"We wanted to make sure this was the best thing we could possibly produce and not cut corners by rushing. We did it the hard way and with an artist like Gotye, we always knew we'd have a large audience, so for us it was important to throw everything we had at it," Darcy said in his director's statement. 

"We completely disregarded 'good business sense' and created a piece of art that would hopefully leave the viewer's cerebral cortex sliding down the computer screen. From a visual perspective, we wanted to bombard our audience with magic," he said. 

"There were so many times where we were literally working on the individual elements for 24 hours straight, surviving purely on the belief of the end goal. The set alone, was a small house. We had lunch in it, we had naps on the bed and our actual studio fridge was painted grey put in place. We had to build the various rooms. We furnished them according to colour palette. We found the toilet in the branches of a friends tree. We completely tiled the bathroom ourselves without knowing how. We bought over 10,000 sheets of paper for the office. And after all of that, we burnt it all with a flamethrower for the final camera pass." 

Darcy Prendegast is a well known voice within Australian animation circles, but let's hope this collaboration brings him -- and the rest of the guys at Oh Yeah Wow -- lots more fans in the wider film industry. His acclaimed music video for All India Radio's song Rippled is also worth hunting down. It uses light painting animation, animated frame by frame over six months, using long exposure techniques. 

Check out the stop motion clip and behind-the-scenes gallery below.