The chart-topping single ‘Addy (Never Growing Up)’, by the South African indie rock band The December Streets, was brought to life in this music video. The concept was born in the brainstorming process between the band and the creatives, Run Jump Fly Creations. The song is about never losing touch with your young mind that had no limitations and a hunger for adventure.
It was written by Tristan Coetzee in one evening. Addy is the name of his late childhood friend, and ‘Never Growing Up’ is a reference to living with the passion you had when you were a kid.
The story follows a young boy who begins drawing on a sticky note, the character he draws comes to life, jumping off the note and goes on adventures around the room. Ending with an old man looking back on his life, still drawing and doing what he loves.
“As most creatives dream of for projects, we were given pretty much free reign regarding the brief,” said director Lourens Smit at Run Jump Fly. The constant movement in the video, filled with life’s trials and tribulations, essentially relates back to the idea of growing up. “This tied into the overarching concept, pictured in the stop motion character on the sticky notes,” explained Smit.
Tristan Coetzee and Zayn Opperman co-directed the video. Planning began by finding a suitable space; they chose the home of a friend of theirs in Rietondale, Pretoria. “He could tolerate his home being filled with sticky notes and loads of coffee for three days,” added Smit.
They didn’t want the narrative to be limited by technical animation ability. “We decided to create a stop motion which interacts with the real world,” he said. They decided on sticky notes so that they could essentially have a deconstructed flip-book animation react in a real space.
Every single frame of the video was hand drawn on a sticky note by Zayn Opperman. “In pre-production we drew out each note according to the scene, then stuck them up chronologically on a wall to make sure we did not miss a single frame, and then filled in the blanks, often adjusting and improvising on site,” said Smit. The character moulds and interacts with his surroundings. “This gave us freedom to play around creatively in the space,” said Smit.
They ended up using 3000 sticky notes, shooting the entire video chronologically. “This made the editing much easier as we could essentially import all the images in timelapse fashion and adjust the frames to fit with the music,” explained Smit. “In saying that, we did improvise and illustrate a few scenes that presented themselves while shooting on site.”
Shooting on a Sony a7s with a Zeiss 50mm lens, they stuck down each sticky note and meticulously took a still. This process was repeated 3000 times. “We used guides on the a7s to line up the sticky notes within the frame so that less re-framing would need to be done after the fact, which really helped,” added Smit. “This is the kind of project that lives or dies in the planning process and by doing these little things, it saved us lots of headaches in post.”
Opperman spent around three days creating these illustrations which took more than 14 hours to place around the room. Once these images were compiled, animation and colour was added by Run Jump Fly before everything synced up.
Smit says that, while the video required painstaking attention to detail, it was a lot of fun to make. The only difficulty they faced was trying to control lighting. “With the time it took to photograph each sticky note and the fact that they moved, getting a consistent level of light became quite difficult and a hassle in post.”
The song is driven by the band’s fresh sound, and the video embodies the message that passion never dies.
