Project · Direction, Layout, Animation · Music video · 3D, Watercolor

Jóhann Jóhannsson

A Song for Europa

A black-and-white animated music video for Jóhann Jóhannsson's A Song for Europa, inspired by coded Cold War radio broadcasts.

Blurred black-and-white shoreline with a dark fence at left and a shadowy peak across the water.

A Song for Europa is a black-and-white animated music video for Jóhann Jóhannsson, made at Studio AKA. The composition is built around recordings of the Numbers Stations, shortwave broadcasts of number lists, letters and coded messages from the Cold War era (here is an example recording). The video interprets those broadcasts through animation.

Jóhann approached Studio AKA's Marc Craste, whose short film Varmints he had scored.

The Film

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Stills

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Blurred black-and-white shoreline with a dark fence at left and a shadowy peak across the water.
Radio mast seen from below against a dark sky, with speckled white light on either side.
Night rooftops and apartment blocks with a distant radio mast and a bright burst of light between them.
  • Wooden house with lit windows behind a fence and barbed wire, beside two street lamps.
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Making Of

Marc brought me on to animate the film, which I also directed.

The film uses simple 3D layouts covered in hand-painted watercolor and charcoal paper textures. I also shot plates of fine flour dust with a small Fuji compact camera to make the particles.

Grid of fifteen small paintings: charcoal smudges and indigo watercolor washes on paper.
Hand-painted background textures.
Collage of six black-and-white landscape prints of dark rocky peaks in mist, and a black tree mass.
Landscape reference images.

More on Jóhann's album Orphée and on Studio AKA's website.

Steam locomotive flying flags, in mist, framed by a scratched sepia plate.

Credits

Production Company
Studio AKA
Creative Director
Marc Craste
Producer
Nikki Kefford-White