Backyard Society

Who are they?
Backyard Society. A COLLECTIVE of artists/filmmakers.
Based in Berlin, Germany.

What do they do?
Make animations, puppets, films and motion graphics.
I'm most interested in their puppet animation, especially this one for Crystal Fighters in which they made lots of bustling creatures as puppets to tell a story for this music video.
Atypical approach to a music video - probably not a conventional method of selling music and not what fans would expect?

Lay Low - Crystal Fighters (Official music video) from Wayne McCauslin on Vimeo.

''The video was made with a small group of talented people at our studio in Berlin, using traditional methods such as, stop motion, puppets and hand made miniature sets. The vision came about after speaking to Graham and referencing the marvelous 'power of 10' video, Where we see the journey from the smallest thing in the universe to the biggest. And from that initial idea, I wanted to give the video a narrative and reflect the songs emotiveness and what it evoked in me. A sort of visual metaphor for how life has it's changes and processes, and trying to connect it and make sense of it all.  The biggest challenge was ofcourse trying to recreate the whole universe. We used a lot of glue!'' Wayne McCauslin

How do they relate to my practice?
A commercial business making films, commercials and music videos using puppet animation - something I'm obviously interested in.
Something I could do or look into doing, or a possible place of work.
Too much digital animation and VFX involved for me so I would be most interested in the puppet animation projects.
However, they do mix several processes and they must have people with experience in different processes working together on this. Their Husky video was made using stop motion but then digital puppets were placed in after:

Film was produced over the summer of 2015 in Berlin, and was hand crafted using puppets and miniature sets then finalised with compositing the 3D characters. 


Husky - I'm not coming back (Official Music Video) from Wayne McCauslin on Vimeo.


What can I learn from them?
How they set up a company. What they look for in employees/job applicants. What skills are needed.