Heathrow talks to directors Johanne St-Marie and Mark Lomond of Fluorescent Hill and discovers the secret to the Montreal studio’s growing reputation.

FEED: Congratulations on the success of your striking “Myriad Harbour” video for The New Pornographers. How did the project come together? And how was the video created?

MARK LOMOND: We were asked if we’d be interested in doing something for the band quite awhile before the album came out. We all like the band and their various solo or side projects, so we were pretty enthusiastic about our “YES!” Then a couple of months went by and we were sent two tracks, “Myriad Harbour”, and “Challengers”. Darren and Jo were busy then working on a commercial spot, so I gave it a shot.

The band was on tour, and I needed photo references of all the members, so I could learn to drawn them from any angle. So when they hit Montreal, we shot all eight members in my apartment with three digital cameras and an HD set up. We only had two hours, so we set each camera at a different angle ( low, high dead center etc..) and then spun them in a chair, allowing us to get everything we would need very quickly.

Because we had so little time in that shoot, we couldn’t afford the time to have them act out anything. So I shot Jo as the body double for Neko and Kathryn in the band, and shot my friend Richard as the body double for all six guys.

Then I redrew all the bodies in different sizes and clothes, and attached all of the heads I drew. The mouths are stop motion photographs of my mouth and Jo’s, then drawn and in-betweened and composited into the mix. We went completely paperless for the whole process, and drew everything in Photoshop.

I kept the colour to a minimum and played with three or four combination. I had gone further with the colour combos, but it made the faces unreadable in the really short scenes.

FEED: There is an explosion of creativity in music and art coming out of Montreal, what’s driving this movement and where does FH fit into it?

There has been a lot of hype about Montreal for the past few years. I think what makes the explosion so much more apparent is that fact you have a strong visual backup in the community – whether it’s poster design, music videos, short films, or any visual experimentation, you can find a band or musician that fits perfectly for any one of those mediums, and vice versa.

I think the major factor in both the music and art movement here, at least for ourselves, is in the end we do it ourselves. It’s a bit harder, lets say when you’re doing a commercial for Burger King or some other huge commodity, but in general, we will pass on anything we don’t have a major if not complete say in how the end piece will be.

I think you have to constantly ask yourself, “Why am I making a commercial for *** or a video for ***, when I could spend the same amount of time making a personal film, or painting, or writing a book.” The answer always has to be one of the following: because you can do whatever you want, or the collaboration is going to challenge you in ways you normally wouldn’t make art.

In terms of where we fit in the Montreal scene….I think we’re quite hidden. While we were in school, we’d see all these musicians and artists in class or around the art department, so there is that slight familiarity, but in general I don’t think we fit perfectly into either the booming art and music scene or the complete commercial scene. I

think we can jump back and forth between the two quite effortlessly, because we stick to our guns, and only do what we like. For the longest time people thought we were in LA…when advertising agencies here realized we were local and fluent in French things changed quickly for us.

FEED: The FH style appears to channel a retro quality (old comics, vintage photographs, a touch of Saul Bass), what are your influences?

I am into anything that pushes the conventional…taking something typical and trying to figure out what makes it that way, and then figuring out what the result would be if you started applying the structure of something else.

I think an example of that in our work is our Cadence Weapon video….If you’ve ever seen him live he’s like a million tiny atomic bombs going off with every lyric. And typical hip-hop videos would play off that, but we toned him down and implied an instructional film aesthetic so he would give a constrained stiff performance.

Here’s a short list of what I’ve seen, heard or read in the last month or so that will probably have an effect on whatever I do next:

Film: Berlin Alexanderplatz, Tekkonkinkreet, Ratcatcher
Music: Lykke Li, Odetta, The Free Design
Read: Lenny Bruce Is Dead, Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend, Orson Welles at Work

FEED: Any other anecdote or story you feel like contributing about FH and the work that you do?

The only thing we really try very hard to do is not repeat ourselves too much. We want to approach each piece with a completely different vision than the last piece. We are always asked by agencies or labels which illustrators we work with, but the truth of the matter is it takes a lot of effort to not draw the same thing twice.

If that means we shoot on super8mm for a fancy car commercial or don’t feature a band in a video that’s supposed to sell an image, then it feels newer, fresher and offers more challenges for everyone involved.

Directors Johanne St-Marie and Mark Lomond of Fluorescent Hill.

Watch The New Pornographers “Myriad Harbor”

Watch FH demo reel here

http://www.fluorescenthill.com

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