WATCH: Karni and Saul direct ‘Perfect World’ for Katie Melua
This week sees the launch of directorial duo Karni and Saul‘s animated music video for Katie Melua‘s Perfect World, taken from the singer/songwriter’s seventh studio album In Winter, released last month.
The pair have been producing work since 2002, with previous projects spanning photography, illustration and films including the Will Self adaptation Flytopia and their BAFTA-nominated short Turning. Previous music videos include the BAA and Annecy-winning Float (Flogging Molly) and Winter Trees (Staves), which picked up the Best Promo award at Encounters.
We love producing these kinds of unique projects. It doesn’t happen a lot in this industry that you are given the rare gift of trust from your client. The one major development that dominated the script was that the story will be built around this subject: a difficulty/challenge occurs and a perfect world situation is presented as a sort of resolution. Sometimes it’s a mother’s hug and sometimes it’s a magical slide down a frozen waterfall. This “tension and relief” dynamic leads the whole piece. After the initial creative discussions with Katie we were given the opportunity to create something which is close to our heart and that we truly care about.
Besides the opening and closing live action shots, the piece is mostly pure CG animation, and despite the incredibly tight turnaround on this we managed to do a fair amount of look development and testing, followed by very rough pencil animatics, which blocked the storyline. A CG animatic was produced while we were modelling and texturing the sets, creating the characters, testing and finalising look development. At the end…two weeks of character animation and rendering (thank you Rebus render-farm for supporting the project!!)
-Karni and Saul on making Perfect World
Karni and Saul possess an incredible gift in their ability to create substantial characters who are able to deliver emotional depth within fantastical, meticulously realised environments. They never veer away from the emotional content and fragility of the song, and that is a very rare and much appreciated quality of theirs. They genuinely care. I am so excited and grateful that they have delivered such a charming and magical movie which brings ‘Perfect World’ to life so magnificently.
-Katie Melua
The album, co-produced by Melua and Adam ‘Cecil’ Bartlett, marks her seventh consecutive release to break into the UK Top 10 Album Chart, with Kate Bush the only other British female artist in history to have achieved such a feat.
For more on the work of Karni and Saul visit sulkybunny.com