This video was directed by Shynola, a group of three visual artists based in London. The video was based on a dream Thom had had.
Richard Kenworthy and the other members of animation directing group Shynola had only just finished working on the experimental “blip” promotions for Radiohead’s last album, Kid A, when news came of the speedy, “more accessible” follow-up album, Amnesiac.
Kenworthy admits this was initially greeted by the team with shock: it was evidently time to prepare for more Radiohead-associated work, if they were so inclined. It did not take long to decide they were - the time it took to listen to the album, in fact, according to Kenworthy. The result is a return to the more conventional form of an old-fashioned music promo for both band and directors - but that is perhaps the only conventional thing about it.
Shynola’s video for Pyramid Song is sombre, beautiful, technically brilliant, decidedly nonmainstream and often abstract, but ultimately a simply affecting sci-fi story brilliantly told.
Like the music, the video is related to what has preceded it, suggesting Shynola are embarked on a project that could span both Radiohead albums. It is one that sees them advance their skills as creators of CGI to a new level, literally creating new worlds in which Radiohead’s music can inhabit. For the Kid A blips, the overriding images were hostile and forbidding snow scenes and mountainous landscapes. Here it is the landscape of the Deep combined with the everyday, and the result is devastatingly memorable. And, says Kenworthy, “Technically it was a nightmare.”
The video literally comes together as a bunch of pixels that combine to create a sundappled sea, then revealing what appears to be a concrete island, with a humanoid figure upon it. A darker reality is revealed when he dons an airtank and dives off to reveal the island is actually the top of a skyscraper, and explores a submerged city. The video follows his progress via a cityscape which is scored by more abstract detritus of CGI technology such as visible pixels and graph lines.
Finally he reaches a submerged suburbia, his own bow-fronted home, takes his armchair, and cuts the line to the tank. We return to the surface, to a sunset, which features a point of light that then dances in the sky with other lights before they finally join together.
It was Chris Harding who spawned the underwater idea, after watching a BBC natural history film on amazing varieties of deep-water marine life. “We realised it would go really well with the song,” says Kenworthy. “We ended up doing a test, a two-minute animation of pixellated rocks, particles, bubbles and twinkling lights - and it fitted the music perfectly.” This two-minute piece became the basis of the central section in the promo.
At this stage there were no characters, no underwater city. That came after their meeting with Thom Yorke. “Thom told us about the dream that had inspired the lyrics, about a group of survivors lost at sea on a makeshift raft,” says Kenworthy. He adds that the tone and minimalist nature of the story were also influenced by a storyline in a cult comic book beloved by all the Shynola members, the Acme Pocket Library.
“There’s a character in the comic called Rocket Sam who always features in a one-page story,” he says. “These stories are very simple, but poignant and a bit upsetting. We felt that because the song was so long it needed something simple to carry it through.”
Their experience of working with Radiohead has effectively led to a rigorous paring-down of the narrative elements to their purest form. As Kenworthy points out, there are only 36 edits in the whole piece. “As a result we spent a lot of time arguing about what we could show,” he says. “It wasn’t really important what our character was — he’s the vessel through which we tell the story, but we spent about a week arguing about the storyboard. In the end we only had four weeks to do this.”
Paramount importance has been placed on the composition of each shot, which meant the team creating the underwater city completely from scratch - cars, buildings, roads, Thirties front doors - making it realistic (Gideon Baws and Jason Groves built the “props”), then customising and roughing~up elements to make them non-real because, as Kenworthy says, “We pretty much despise realistic animation.”
However, the underwater effect necessarily had to feel “real”, which was Kenworthy’s particular headache. “All the big no-nos in CGI are about doing sea, doing clouds and any kind of underwater effects, which are all central to this video,” he says. “It could have been too much, but importantly we knew the story did work.”
Being virtual veterans by now in the discipline of 3D animation, Shynola actually beat their own tight deadline for completing the video. Kenworthy says, “I think we were much more in tune with the material this time, because of working on the blips. It wasn’t actually that hard to make it all fit.” However, the result is devastating.
PRODUCTION: Oil Factory; directors: Shynola; producer: Paul Fennelly.
POST: offline editor: Shynola at home; online: Tim Harding at Clear.
COMMISSIONER: Dilly Gent at Parlophone.
Kenworthy admits this was initially greeted by the team with shock: it was evidently time to prepare for more Radiohead-associated work, if they were so inclined. It did not take long to decide they were - the time it took to listen to the album, in fact, according to Kenworthy. The result is a return to the more conventional form of an old-fashioned music promo for both band and directors - but that is perhaps the only conventional thing about it.
Shynola’s video for Pyramid Song is sombre, beautiful, technically brilliant, decidedly nonmainstream and often abstract, but ultimately a simply affecting sci-fi story brilliantly told.
Like the music, the video is related to what has preceded it, suggesting Shynola are embarked on a project that could span both Radiohead albums. It is one that sees them advance their skills as creators of CGI to a new level, literally creating new worlds in which Radiohead’s music can inhabit. For the Kid A blips, the overriding images were hostile and forbidding snow scenes and mountainous landscapes. Here it is the landscape of the Deep combined with the everyday, and the result is devastatingly memorable. And, says Kenworthy, “Technically it was a nightmare.”
The video literally comes together as a bunch of pixels that combine to create a sundappled sea, then revealing what appears to be a concrete island, with a humanoid figure upon it. A darker reality is revealed when he dons an airtank and dives off to reveal the island is actually the top of a skyscraper, and explores a submerged city. The video follows his progress via a cityscape which is scored by more abstract detritus of CGI technology such as visible pixels and graph lines.
Finally he reaches a submerged suburbia, his own bow-fronted home, takes his armchair, and cuts the line to the tank. We return to the surface, to a sunset, which features a point of light that then dances in the sky with other lights before they finally join together.
It was Chris Harding who spawned the underwater idea, after watching a BBC natural history film on amazing varieties of deep-water marine life. “We realised it would go really well with the song,” says Kenworthy. “We ended up doing a test, a two-minute animation of pixellated rocks, particles, bubbles and twinkling lights - and it fitted the music perfectly.” This two-minute piece became the basis of the central section in the promo.
At this stage there were no characters, no underwater city. That came after their meeting with Thom Yorke. “Thom told us about the dream that had inspired the lyrics, about a group of survivors lost at sea on a makeshift raft,” says Kenworthy. He adds that the tone and minimalist nature of the story were also influenced by a storyline in a cult comic book beloved by all the Shynola members, the Acme Pocket Library.
“There’s a character in the comic called Rocket Sam who always features in a one-page story,” he says. “These stories are very simple, but poignant and a bit upsetting. We felt that because the song was so long it needed something simple to carry it through.”
Their experience of working with Radiohead has effectively led to a rigorous paring-down of the narrative elements to their purest form. As Kenworthy points out, there are only 36 edits in the whole piece. “As a result we spent a lot of time arguing about what we could show,” he says. “It wasn’t really important what our character was — he’s the vessel through which we tell the story, but we spent about a week arguing about the storyboard. In the end we only had four weeks to do this.”
Paramount importance has been placed on the composition of each shot, which meant the team creating the underwater city completely from scratch - cars, buildings, roads, Thirties front doors - making it realistic (Gideon Baws and Jason Groves built the “props”), then customising and roughing~up elements to make them non-real because, as Kenworthy says, “We pretty much despise realistic animation.”
However, the underwater effect necessarily had to feel “real”, which was Kenworthy’s particular headache. “All the big no-nos in CGI are about doing sea, doing clouds and any kind of underwater effects, which are all central to this video,” he says. “It could have been too much, but importantly we knew the story did work.”
Being virtual veterans by now in the discipline of 3D animation, Shynola actually beat their own tight deadline for completing the video. Kenworthy says, “I think we were much more in tune with the material this time, because of working on the blips. It wasn’t actually that hard to make it all fit.” However, the result is devastating.
PRODUCTION: Oil Factory; directors: Shynola; producer: Paul Fennelly.
POST: offline editor: Shynola at home; online: Tim Harding at Clear.
COMMISSIONER: Dilly Gent at Parlophone.