Pure Bathing Culture – Dream the Dare
2013 · Directed by Hayley Morris
4.1K Likes
Best comments
1.“Tickles me right in the Cocteau Twins!”
More comments
- 2.“This sounds like it would be played in a slow-motion gory killing scene in a movie... or a drug trip.”
- 3.“Heard this song on 2K and couldn't stop listening. Turns out it's my most played song on Spotify this year, wtf. Gotta keep hiding this gem from the homies, though.”
The story
Pure Bathing Culture is a Portland duo, Sarah Versprille and Daniel Hindman, and Dream the Dare comes off their 2013 debut album Moon Tides. They've said the song is about calling someone to change and having the nerve to actually do it. Hard to put that on camera. So they handed it to an animator.
Hayley Morris (who also made Iron & Wine's Joy video) built the whole thing by hand as stop motion: paper puppets, sculpted sets, a world where organic shapes and geometry blur together. She shot it in camera, frame by frame, and projected hand-drawn animation onto the sets, most of it drawn by Caleb Wood. About six weeks of building and a month of animating. A raven drifts through it all, its eye color shifting as it goes.
Morris picked the raven on purpose. Ravens and crows carry old baggage as tricksters and as go-betweens for this world and the next, and she wanted you to wonder whether you're seeing her world or the bird's version of it. She said she worked from the feel of the song more than the words, eyes closed, imagining drifting through clouds. It shows.
