WATCH: Joseph Wallace animates ‘Chemicals’ for Parker Bossley
Skwigly
Award-winning animation director Joseph Wallace has created an inventive cut-out animation music video for the Canadian singer Parker Bossley. Chemicals features Bossley travelling through a series of mystical doors into surreal landscapes whilst metamorphosing into different animals. Filmed at his new studio; Hangar Puppet Animation Studio, in Bristol, UK, the four-minute Chemicals video sees Wallace utilise found image collage animation with a striking in-camera kaleidoscope effect. The video marks a return to cut-out animation, a technique last visited in Wallace’s 2014 Vimeo staff pick / British Film Institute Network pick Natural Disaster.
I wanted to take the song’s themes and create a metaphor exploring the animalistic instincts of lust and desire, predator and prey. It was a very playful, responsive process improvising around the found imagery and my interpretations of the lyrics.
-Joseph Wallace, director
Parker Bossley enters a prismatic realm in a room of open doors, offering a glimpse of familiar yet dreamlike scenes glossed with Lewis Carroll-like sentiment. The journey into each wonderland begins with whimsical intention, but quickly develops an unnerving edge. Chemicals is Bossley’s debut release as a solo artist and is is currently available for streaming on digital music platforms.
Joseph’s previous music video for American band Sparks trended on both Youtube and Vimeo, played on BBC’s Newsnight and The One Show and featured on the Guardian online. It has screened at over twenty-five international animation festivals, won two awards and was nominated for the Kinsale Shark Awards and the British Animation Awards. Joseph is currently working on a new short film, produced by Delaval Film, which won the pitching prize at the Visegrad Animation Forum last year. The film is due to be released summer 2019.
Keep up to date with Joseph’s work at josephwallace.co.uk