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“Len Lye was the big inspiration and I wanted to emulate some of his scratch animations, I got totally obsessed with Free Radicals, which is obviously far superior to what I’ve ended up with. Method wise; I got 1000ft of blank, transparent 35mm film from Kodak and then cut it into 2 metre sections, at 24fps this is about 5 seconds worth. I then spray-painted these 2 metre strips different colours. Once dry, I used a leather-working awl and a razor blade to scratch frame by frame, mostly abstract, moving patterns and shapes – knowing the BPM of Will’s track i calculated how many frames between each beat and got slowly better at trying to animate rhythmically. I would also print, frame by frame, short sections of video of Will singing the song onto see through plastic, using an inkjet printer. Then I’d cut these and sellotape them to the back of the painted film strips – after which, I could scratch away at the paint revealing him singing. Finally, I fed the film through a holder sitting on a small LED panel, photographing each illuminated frame from above – obviously this was quite painstakingly slow, but the process leads to a lot of homemade elements and I think, although at times maddening to control and slow to integrate, they contribute to the video.” — Gregory Oke
