How did the idea for the narrative come about for your film Dear Moon for musicians Coffee or Not?

We discussed the meaning of the song with the band and they answered: “It’s about life and death…” so you could say they gave us creative freedom!

What was behind your decision to use stop-frame with cut-outs? Was there quite a lot of experimentation beforehand?

We had been interested in stopmotion for a while and we decided to make the video in paper. We simply went into a shop and bought materials that inspired us. We did a lot of tests with different papers to find the appropriate ones for the background, the trees and houses etc.

Did you storyboard each scene?

No there wasn’t a storyboard, however, we wrote each scene in detail, then filmed the band and made the whole movie frame by frame in After Effects before printing and cutting out the characters.

What were the main challenges of the production?

The biggest challenge was having to work on other paid projects at the same time while keeping our energy up for Coffee or Not until the end of the production.

Tell us who Pikaboo is.

Pikaboo is an audiovisual studio specializing in motion graphics, 3D animation and location filming based in Brussels, Belgium.
Pikaboo is made up of two best friends, Michele and Gwen. One is a scriptwriter and director and feels comfortable with real people, while the other is a magician with the computer and plays with 3D toys and imaginary universes. They both love paper and craft art.

Do you have clearly defined skill sets? How does your collaborative process work?

On Dear Moon we both decided which technique to use then Michele wrote the script in detail with the technical particulars.
We both shot the band with a DP and director’s assistant.
Gwen selected the good frames and made the first edit in After Effects.
We both created the universe with paper, plastic, trees, plane …
We printed all the frames and cut out each pose.
We were helped by everybody, friends, colleagues, bands, mothers…
Gwen then made the final edit: compositing elements with a lot of drawing, 3D and color corrections.

We love the mental making of. How long did it actually take to shoot? And how many fps?

It took 18 months to finalise the clip because we were also working at the same time. If we’d been free and had had the money to focus on just this project we would have finished it in three months.

We used each frame three times so we made over 2000 frames for this clip.