Reckoner by Radiohead

When I first heard this song, I fell in love, as have many others on Youtube. I'm still not sure what the song is about, but like to imagine it's about our relationship to the divine and our imaginations of paradise (if you look closely, you might find a frozen reference to Brueghel's Tower of Babel). That interpretation seemed to fit with idea I had almost a year ago: make a city out of ice and film it melting.

I've never worked with ice or with stop-motion photography before, and in a tropical climate with no special equipment this video represents a craven act of hubris. Just figuring out how to cast ice reliably in our crowded kitchen freezer took a couple of weeks. And the finale shot of a city from above which took four days to set up yielded no usable footage.

These few minutes of footage used 2qts of latex, 20lbs of plaster, 60lbs of clay, 1 tank of propane, 3 video cameras, 1 digital SLR (for stop motion), 29 hours of video tape (mostly re-cycled), 350+ gigabytes and the inexhaustible patience of my room mates who were deprived of icy cold vodka for nearly a month. For every shot of ice melting, there were at least 2 failed attempts, mostly due to structural failure and premature melting.

If I had a walk-in freezer or lived in a cold climate, this could have been really, really amazing. Considering the limitations I had, I'm a little proud it got made at all.

This footage is compressed from PAL widescreen.

I love Radiohead.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• radiohead
• reckoner
• in
• rainbows
• ice
• animation
• nathaniel
• walters

[GentlemenAnijatsu]

This is probably the best video for this song I've seen. Other ones try too hard to be complicated and because of it, the errors in making, whether is a camera that shakes too much or lack of better equipment, are very easily visible. Meanwhile this has got that simple yet interesting idea of an ice city that keeps interesting through the video, combined with some unusual, amazing shots.

TLDR: Very good job there.

[naieGrrr]

it is awesome!

[Fermiimplosive]

Awesome job man, love your vids!

[tamiko9]

This was an amazing video, and all the work you did put into it was definitely worth it!

[ErrorCache]

awesome video

fits the song very well

nice job!

i love Radiohead too :D

[embrassemoi04]

this is most impressive. 5 stars+

[cigman4567]

unusual but nice