Get Shouty

Autumn Story by Firekites  is a beautiful piece of animation, with the hushed melodies of the wonderful, under-the-radar band from Newcastle, NSW.

As you watch, the camera follows an ever-transforming pattern of chalk illustrations: people playing Chinese whispers leads to birds in wingspan – their flight path flitting from blackboard to blackboard; later, we see the raggedy outlines of a slinking cat and more sketched forms coming to life.

The clip is a stop-motion work that was painstakingly created over six months by Sydney directors Yanni Kronenberg and Lucinda Schreiber. Most of it was filmed at Brethren Just Belowin Surry Hills, NSW, using the still function of an HD video camera.

“Lucinda and I came up with the concept together,” explains Yanni. “There are 1910 individual chalk drawings in the video – every image you see was physically drawn with chalk.”

“Every day after shooting, our bodies and laptops were covered in chalk dust. We found chalk was a beautiful but temperamental medium to animate in – and we had to use combinations of different household liquids to prepare the blackboard surface for animating on.”