Dezeen Magazine

Winston Hacking creates absurd paper puppets for Soupcans' Siamese Brutality music video

Music: paper puppeteer and animator Winston Hacking has created a series of moving collages for the video to accompany Soupcans' Siamese Brutality track.

Soupcans' Siamese Brutality by Winston Hacking

The filmmaker was invited by the Canadian band's label, Telephone Explosion Records, to choose a track from its Soft Party Album and create a film.

Soupcans' Siamese Brutality by Winston Hacking

"I was throwing a bunch of my collages in a shredder when they called," Hacking told Dezeen. "I listened to the music as the collages were being destroyed and that's how the concept was born."

Soupcans' Siamese Brutality by Winston Hacking

The film opens on a woman weightlifting a giant spanner, and continues to feature similarly surreal imagery including a model rubbing against a swordfish and a man trying to eat a floating dessert.

"The song is great and I like how it opens slowly – it allowed me to set up these stupid paper characters and the logic behind the movement," the film-maker said.

Soupcans' Siamese Brutality by Winston Hacking

"When the song kicks into high gear I just get more loose with everything to the point that it is almost hard to watch," he added. "I like the idea of pausing on moments of the video and appreciating a still frame – that's where I get to add humour."

Soupcans' Siamese Brutality by Winston Hacking

Hacking used imagery snipped out of magazines and newspapers, as well as pieces from his own collection of collages, to create the moving scenes.

Soupcans' Siamese Brutality by Winston Hacking

Sections of the film showing moving cut-out paper puppets are intercut with chaotic flashing patterns. Hacking completed the video across the course of three days.

"I don't like to work on promotional videos for too long," he said. "They are fleeting creations that are taken in by the viewer for 15 to 30 seconds, why should I toil over something like that for weeks – that approach is for college kids."

Soupcans' Siamese Brutality by Winston Hacking

"With that in mind my approach is to create gestures of movement but not commit to the finicky details of making it look realistic," he added.

Soupcans' Siamese Brutality by Winston Hacking

"I want to capture the spirit of the music and find humour/confusion through clunky or lazy 'paperteering' as I like to call it."

Soupcans' Siamese Brutality by Winston Hacking

Siamese Brutality is taken from Soupcans' Soft Party album, released on 13 November 2015.