Crush and REM Strike Again


After their first well received collaboration with REM (Hollow Man), Crush follows up with “Man Sized Wreath.” This piece deals with an anonymous man’s daily routine and shows us how lost and alienated we can become in our visually saturated and over-stimulating environment.

“[As Hollow Man] was intended as a statement about isolation, the fear of losing who we are. This film is a more pointed statement about the state of the world politically, and the idea that we are all hypnotized by so much meaningless diversion we don’t focus on things that matter.”

Title: Man-Sized Wreath
Artist: R.E.M
Label: Warner Bros. Records
Director: Crush, Toronto
Production Company: Crush, Toronto
Writer, Creative Director: Gary Thomas
Executive Producer: Jo-ann Cook
Producer: Stephanie Pennington
Assistant Producer: Kristen Van Fleet
Editor: Kim Knight, Sons and Daughters, Toronto
Shot, Designed & Animated by: Crush, Toronto

About the author

Matt Lambert

/ www.dielamb.com
NYC / London

26 Comments

bertBrown

“hey, can we through some more crap in the shot? it doesnt seem quite busy enough”

Triz

can you work on your sentence construction? It doesn’t seem to be proper enough.

Adam

Im just wonder why there is:

Director: Crush, Toronto
Production Company: Crush, Toronto

Crush Toronto :) ? Oscar winner :) lol

Who was director of it ? And why they are hidding it ? no sense for me

gary Thomas

The clip was very much a collaboration. While there were a couple of people who spearheaded the project, and did the treatment, the designers involved each brought so much to their pieces we didn’t think it was right to single out one person. No hiding.

Justin Case

Gary Thomas a.k.a CREATIVE DIRECTOR –
You are the man for thinking you can call yourself a creative director.
how did you make all these 3d cubes? and how do you make an animation look so linear, abrupt and everything but organic and fluid .
?

Robby Trione

I like it! Lots of cool effects!

boca

Nicelly Crushed! ;-D

mathagat

a disjointed kaleidoscope of visuals who’s point may be to portray the over-stimulation of the world we have made for ourselves, but in doing so have created something which over-stimulates at near seizure inducing levels. and i don’t mean that in a good way.

RexHex

mathagat

Will you direct us your fellow designers to your reel?

It must be a wonder to behold. How many designs of yours have been featured on this site or any other?

Please enlighten us. We are honored and humbled at your presence.

sting_is_gay

who is this REM person? he sounds like a bad eighties tribute band or something. what? oh.

motion maniac

babe it’s very well know band!

KMFIX

reminds me of the days when music videos were fun to watch.. good stuff!

Justin Case

back to the quickies ! I wouldn’t even post it in there…

But hey, Im sure someone from Crush prolly paid some one here in motionographer money for this post.

Corruption ? naaa.. not in motionographer OR :

its not like Justin ever used this website to self promote himself (*cough*weddingcontest*cough*)

this website is degrading itself every day.

boca

Yeah Justin, you cracked it!
We get big bucks for every post, and tips for the quickyes, didn’t you know that?

Jesus… ;-o

newyorknoise

After 30 seconds I honestly thought that is supposed to be making fun of stereotypes in motion-design, but after watching the whole thing I am not sure anymore.

Harm

wow, such negative comments. I kinda like this. Okey it’s not pretty, there’s no high-end 3D and no cool motiontracking, but I think the way they use images is highly intriging. It’s like a garbage collage. Trashografics. And with all the stuff happening, it’s still a whole. It has a nice pace and the editing is pretty good. Keep on the good stuff Crush, it’s a nice change from all the slick and polished mograph work. And I really think it’s worth more then a quickie.

flablo

I love this video so much (and I love Hollow man too), it just stays so different from all the cliche-patinated-stuff we see day by day. I think Crush was very brave with this choice of creating an aesthetic out of unaesthetic elements. It’s risky, as you may come up with something that in the end is unpleasant. But it’s not. If you look at the frames, the use of digital articfacts here is great. The cheap digital palette and cheap 3d are great. This is not senseless eye candy. Who doesn’t understand this may stay into his/her beautiful world of colourful painted fantasy where lines, shiny drops and flowers grows from everywhere.

Deocliciano

OH! Tiananmen Square WAS not forgetter.
Was sweet!

… Only ITs Happy-Ended?!

Truth is WE’ll all become ROBOTs while robots will become more HUMAN!
There is NO scape!

mark

I can remember doing this sort of stuff when i was at uni, i dont really understand whats so different about this, people were churning this stuff out all the time in the early nineties. harsh but true

scott

@mark. i totally agree with you but what did you think about the graphics?

nathan

I think this clip is great – it is reminiscent of everybody first after effects test render but at least it doesn’t look like another bloody trapcode tutorial. There’s a lot going on as well, it’s a lot more sophisticated than it first appears and I’m really digging the lo-fi trashy aesthetic. No lens flares = awesome.

monovich

actually, trapcode was the first thing that went through my mind when I saw all those cubes…

Tara

That song is horrid. Anyone with a rhyming dictionary and a few dozen clichés could have churned that out. OWW!! Sorry to the REM fans.

Andy

I’m genuinely starting to think that this blog has become far too popular for it’s own good. I definitely can’t remember this level of pointless negativity (almost always by posters who lack any linkage to their own work) back in the days of Tween.

Yes, this website is indeed “degrading itself every day” when it puts up with a level of commentary that amounts to nothing more than snidey and almost personal attacks. There’s nothing remotely intelligent, constructive or useful there, ‘Justin Case’.

tomorrowisclosed

totally agree with you andy. its shooting fish in a barrel really this wild criticism behind a greyed out name. reminds me of the sort of people who call up poll lines marked ‘yes’, ‘no’, and ‘don’t know’, and say ‘i don’t know’.

Christopher Mills

Beautiful work, but individual credits to each of the artists who clearly worked hard on this might show them a bit more respect.

Corporatizing the collected efforts of hard working artists is kind of like seeing a curator take credit for an artists’ work.

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