Our precious land deserves care and appreciation. You can do the former by not making toy boats out of plastic bags. You can do the latter by making an eye-blisteringly gorgeous music video that honours these godly landscapes.
Show Me Shorts, New Zealand’s largest short film festival, recognises the music video artform every year. They praised some recent waiata for Papatūānuku, which instantly provoked a memory I had about another NZ On Air vid I saw a few years ago.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember the artist, the song, or the year it came out. All I remember was “dude walks New Zealand frame by frame and it looks really cool.” Miraculously, with those cryptic instructions, Show Me Shorts and NZ On Air were able to point me to Jonny Love’s Weight of Tomorrow.
A stop-motion time-lapse walk across Aotearoa is a simple idea for a music video in the same way an aeroplane is a simple idea for a mode of transport. The actual execution of said idea requires an abundance of planning and a valiant amount of perseverance.
On a deep level, this is what makes Ivan Slavov’s music video so satisfying. Anyone can understand immediately the painstaking mahi that must have gone into this stop-mo music video right down to the fine detail of Love having to lift his foot up and down precisely in every frame to give the appearance of walking.
On a shallow level, it’s just an utter visual joy to blitz through the lustre Papatūānuku has to offer from Invercargill to Cape Reinga. Give it a watch.
