Channel Frederator Blog

NYC based studio //kneeon! is responsible for the cool creative music video for “The Gold” by John Brown’s Body. The video was directed by Kelly Goeller and Mike Healey and over a dozen animators contributed to the film. They have asked to collectively go by the name //kneeon!

Channel Frederator: Where did you get your animation education?

//kneeon!: We are animation students at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. We have been working together on animated projects for about 4 years now, which led us to co-found //kneeon! , a production company specializing in both animation and live action.

CF: Who or what has influenced your work the most?

K!: Our influences range from Michel Gondry’s music videos to Norman McLaren, Vik Muniz to Rachel Ray, and from gradients to comic sans.

CF: How did you develop the concept for this film? Where did you find all of the animators who contributed their work?

K!: //kneeon! was approached by Seth Herman, the manager of John Brown’s Body, who asked if we wanted to do a video for the band’s latest single. The idea of doing a music video for a remix of a song intrigued us and inspired us to try to do a music video with as many different animation styles as possible. We decided to try to get a large variety of different animators on board to each create their own interpretations of the song. //kneeon! reached out to all of our friend animators and Seth also contacted animators whose work we admired in an attempt to get them on board.

Luckily enough, we found 15 very talented animators willing to collaborate with us on the video. The concept was fairly loose because we wanted to allow a lot of creative freedom for the animators. We dissected the song into sections and gave each animator a storyboard containing a starting and ending frame to ensure that the video would graphically flow from one style to another. The entire video, from concept through delivery, was completed in only 3 weeks.

CF: Are you working on any new projects you can tell us about?

K!: In the next month, we will be finishing up two short stop-motion films which we plan to enter into film festivals next year. We also have other music videos in the works, including one for a Brooklyn-based rap group.

Thanks //kneeon! You can check out John Brown’s Body “The Gold” right here on Channel Frederator!

-Bailee DesRocher