Sean Pecknold: Fleet Foxes “White Winter Hymnal”

“White Winter Hymnal,” a stop-action music video directed by Sean Pecknold for Seattle band Fleet Foxes, is a quietly beautiful meditation on nature and time. Channeling the music’s cyclical vocals, the video stars a Father Time-ish gnome who brings to life—and then to death—the natural world around him.

Sean is repped by Curious Pictures, but this project was completed on his own in Seattle. Sean’s brother, incidentally, is Fleet Foxes’ lead singer. Neat.


Director: Sean Pecknold
Animators: Christopher Rodgers, Britta Johnson, Sean Pecknold, Paul Maupoux
Miniature sets: Sean Pecknold, Thomas Troisch, Britta Johnson
Costume Design: Joy Andrews
Puppets: Christopher Rodgers, Britta Johnson, Sean Pecknold, Mollie Fabric Consultants: Noel Paul, Greg Pecknold
Photography: Sean Pecknold
Editorial: Sean Pecknold Producer: Grandchildren
Client: Sub Pop Records

About the author

Justin Cone

/ justincone.com
Together with Carlos El Asmar, Justin co-founded Motionographer, F5 and The Motion Awards. He currently lives in Austin, Texas with is wife, son and fluffball of a dog. Before taking on Motionographer full-time, Justin worked in various capacities at Psyop, NBC-Universal, Apple, Adobe and SCAD.

7 Comments

yetch

so good.

Matt

Yes, very good. Although polished SM is always pleasurable (i.e. Parks or Burton), I really enjoy the looser, rougher, ‘handcrafted’ look of animation such as this – it really adds to a more tactile and empathetic state. Nice work.

BaconIsGood4You

Awesome work. Awesome music. Those Pecknold boys sure are talented.

Issara willenskomer

My good friend Britta Johnson, stop motion genius that she is, apparently did some work on this, too. You can see her awesome work at The Kenosha Motion Picture Institute.

sean Pecknold

britta is amazing!
so are christopher and paul, and joy!
i miss staying up ridiculously late with you guys.
thanks for all your hard work.

Brian

Really weird. I was at a Fleet Foxes show at the Bowery Ballroom maybe 4 months ago here in NYC, randomly started talking to a guy outside who said he worked at Curious Pictures with one of the bandmate’s brothers. So good.

John

Haha, that was me, Brian. I am Sean’s sales rep at Curious–and very proud of this video of his…

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