Orie Weeks enchanting promo for Blitzen Trapper

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Ladies and Gentlemen, take your seats and pray silence, please, for the new promo by director Orie Weeks for Blitzen Trapper and their blinding new single, ‘Wild Mountain Nation’.

Orie, formerly a gigging drummer, met the band Blitzen Trapper on the circuit in Portland Oregon. Although Orie’s fortunes took him off to the Art Institute of Portland, he remained good friends with the band.

Always a fan of Blitzen Trapper’s music, Orie decided to bring his new moving image skills back to the gig venues and started to film the band live. An interest in camera work soon saw Orie getting his teeth into editing and ‘image manipulation’, the results of which can be seen in this video. Orie sights Terry Gilliam as a huge influence, professing to having fallen in love with the surreal animation sections Gilliam realised during his Monty Python years. And this influence is abundantly obvious throughout this promo. Rye visual puns like the anvils with wings or members of the band playing on Saturn’s rings take me right back to my student days watching Python in a smoky West-Midlands living room.

Firstly, the track is an absolute belter. It really reminds me of Tom Petty and particularly his stint with The Travelling Wilburys. It’s infectious right from the first listen. Secondly, I’m absolutely enchanted by Orie’s work. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s something so relaxed and yet so confident about this promo. His animations are naïve, which is a real breath of fresh air in this era of ‘Whizz-bang’. But his compositions are beautifully put together and take me from one place to the next in a totally un-forced way. You kind of come to the end of this promo feeling relaxed and happy, not like you’ve been dragged at light speed through someone’s entire bag of tricks. And I think that’s just it, it doesn’t feel like Orie is trying to impress us, he’s just inviting us along for the ride.

About the author

Simon Robson

/ www.knife-party.net
Live in London with my girlfriend Emma. Animation director with Nexus Productions. Moving to Sydney for a while in October. Likes: anything that dings my creative dong, sushi, spongebob, crap Saturday evening TV, White chocolate, Muai Thai. Dislikes: Plagirism, PNAC, cleaning up my cats' sick.

23 Comments

wiremu

The music is utter rubbish.

Lightweaver

its hilarious when I come here and I know the person who is spotlighted. ha!

Lightweaver

love it! the text at the end could use a little help. After all that work, you’d think 2 more minutes could’ve been spend the text. other than that cheers! I wend to the Art Intst. also …Jason zaw.
=)

pennyd

The music is great. The video has something new to offer everytime I watch it. I want to see it on a big screen. Nice work Orie.

KGB

Not my style of music, but I def. dont think its rubbish… Nice vid!
Anyone getting a flicker from what I assume is from the encode?

xpez2000

seems to aptly capture a country fried, post modern, monty python aesthetic…

bicycleman

This is awful work and it should not be posed on motionographer!

BLOCKHEAD

bandwidth exceeded

pennyd

we’re working on it now, should be up momentarily.

zeniamai

The song is not utterly rubbish. The video is ok and xpez2000 has aptly said what I need to say, “seems to aptly capture a country fried, post modern, monty python aesthetic…” Right on..

rothermel

is pennyd commenting on how great their own video is?

OEW3

No roth, that’s my friend Jonny commenting. We live a country apart from one another. He was just being supportive. Orie

OEW3

We share a website, and the bandwidth was exceeded. He helped fix it because I know nothing about those sorts of things.

OEW3

And btw, he said the MUSIC was great. He, like myself, is rabidly devoted to Blitzen Trapper.

DISCONFIGURED

Way to go Orie!!! rockin it on motionogapher!

Yussef

I think it’s awesome that this guy is coming into the mograph world from a music background and has some fresh approaches and ideas, but how can i applaud this piece when works like Natl’s Virgin ‘Music Muscle’ spot staked their claim on Gilliam’s legacy years ago? The piece is also incredibly rough, popping layers, jerky puppetry, blurry overscaled images, slapped together compositions, so much more work could have been put into refining this and making the experience of it shine and preventing the technical flaws from drawing attention to themselves. a lot of the elements are very cool and the artist definitely has a future in this… i wish him the best of luck.

natl’s piece:
https://mographwiki.net/National_Television_%22Virgin_Music_Muscle%22

OEW3

Yussef, thanks for your response. I appreciate your even tone. I’ve never seen the spot you speak of, but I’m sure it’s very nice. I’m messy, that’s a big part of my style, visually and musically. Had I spent “more time” on this project to make the changes you speak of, it would no longer be my project. It took a very long time to finish as it is. This IS how I wanted it to be, whether by choice or amateur chance. I’m not a slick animator, nor do I wish to be right now. I like to see slick stuff once in a while, but I don’t need to make any of it currently. My favorite band is the Velvet Underground and they were accused of exactly the same thing in their time. Sloppy drum beats, bad tones, off key vocals, over-extended freakout parts, these are all things that define the band now, yet held them back when they were around. The changes you suggest explain the way you would do it, and I’m sure it would be good that way too, but I can’t do it any other way the the way I did it. Thanks again. OEW3

nbody

no offense or insult to the maker, but that video is unremarkable. solid and engaging, but without anything deeming worthy of flagging down professionals and notifying them to take the time and watch it. formal crudeness is fine, but i would expect some sort of conceptual or stylistic quality in the realm of extraordinary to make up for it. if this was made three years ago, then i’d probably be applauding… but there’s nothing particularly innovative or well-crafted in there. and the whole “google image animation collage” motif has 1.5 feet in the grave.

again, the maker did a solid job, especially for a first video, but i’m confused as to why this is on here. sorry if all that sounds vile, i don’t mean to.

24caratti

I found both the music and the visuals to be entertaining and complimentary. It seems to me that the impact of the song would be in some way lessened by the presence of slick and/or “perfect” visuals. Admittedly, I have to approach this from a outsiders perspective because I know next to nothing about motion graphics. On the other hand I do know music and although the song is not perfect, it is enjoyable and it’s a nice piece. The visuals are not perfect either but they are also enjoyable and well done. In my opinion, this is wonderful and entertaining marriage of song and animation. It is a great introduction to the music of Blitzen Trapper and it’s also a really nice introduction to a new visual artist in Orie. I look forward to more from this talent. It will be interesting to see where he goes from here.

Simon Robson

> flagging down professionals and notifying them to take the time and watch it

Nbody, did I email you and instruct you to hastily open your browser, log-on to Motionographer, watch Orie’s video and then post a comment about it? No, I don’t think i did. Now back to work before your boss catches surfing the web on his dollar!

nbody

simon, thank you for your incredibly poignant advice– except for the fact that i am self-employed and rendering for a few hours… though perhaps you would like to be my HR consultant with such useful insight on productivity and labor management.

do you have any more friends’ vapid press releases to repost on this blog? oh wait, i think that’s what feed and studiodaily are for. oh wait, except those press releases are about projects that are actually usually worth watching.

you also might wanna add a link to the band’s iTunes page to keep in tune with your post.

Simon Robson

Darn it, you got me nbody. Yes, me and Orie have been friends for years. In fact we went to kindergarten together. I always did comment on how his potato prints were a little rough round the edges, but he never did listen. And the band, yes, we’re all best buddies too. Every summer we go fishing together at that big lake they have in Portland. Last year the guitarist caught this huge trout, wow it was awesome. Yeah, that’s right, all best buddies helping each other get by…

rothermel

what the hell simon… i didnt know there was a big lake in portland. of all the years i lived there, i feel like you’ve left me out. :(

…maybe you can make a mograph post about me, and i will become insanely famous. ;)

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