Wednesday, Dec. 07, 2011

Kina Grannis: In Your Arms

How many jellybeans does it take to tell a story? 288,000. That's how many of Reagan's favorite candies it took to create the stop-motion jellybean world behind Kina Grannis as she sings "In Your Arms." Like any animation project, the process is time consuming and tedious. This one took 22 months. Eschewing CGI or green screen, the director makes the singer lie on glass above thousands of beans, which are altered frame-by-frame, with Grannis posing differently for each shot (think Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer") based on a pre-prepared animatic. It's a process few musical artists would have the patience — or the time — to perform. But it makes a sunny song sunnier. And the making-of video is almost as much fun to watch (maybe more) as the video itself.