Music Video // Her Morning Elegance by Oren Lavie

Directed by   Oren Lavie
Running time 4 minutes

The music video for the song 'Her Morning Elegance' by Oren Lavie, features a specific type of stop motion animation called Pixilation. Pixilation being the use of live actors, and compiling photographs of poses in order to create the illusion that the actors and moving. The style of Pixilation and the out come of the Pixilation process creates a very unique look and feel to the animation. 

There is a certain story aspect to this animation that coincides with the song in the background. Throughout the song the lyrics refer to 'her' and 'she' hence the character in the animation is a woman, and you really feel from the animation because of the pacing of it and the very elegant style of it that he's singing about her. The actress and the objects are used very well in the video, together and separately. I particularly like the thought that's gone into using certain objects to represent other things, an example of this, is when the colour of the bed sheet goes a dark navy colour and the actress appears to be swimming under water, socks are used to represent a shoal of fish, and then an individual sock is used to represent a fish on it's own. Overall I thought the use of objects was very individual and you feel like you're discovering something new just by watching the animation. Another aspect to this animation I really liked was that the camera didn't move for the duration, only the materials used and the actress moved which I thought was an incredibly creative use of space and imagination.

I don't think this animation is aimed at anyone in particular, it could be appreciated by people of all ages and is a very worthy accompaniment to the song. I think what ties the animation to the song so well, is the pacing of the Pixilation is very slow and it feels very delicate this I believe is also due to the use of material and fabric as props, so in essence they are very soft and flexible, along with the fact it's filmed on a mattress - together generates a very satisfying and comfortable atmosphere for the audience, which I think is what they were going for since the song is of a similar nature.

With this particular Pixilation animation, I really appreciated the combination of lighting, use of objects and actions along with the design of the set. Brought together with the music is a compelling and touching short animation with a lot of elegance.