Django Django’s In Your Beat video by Sophie Koko Gate and Brodie Kaman sees the band trapped in a poster world

British band Django Django have released the video for their latest track In Your Beat, directed by Sophie Koko Gate and art directed by Brodie Kaman. Animation director Sophie, aka SKG, and graphic designer Brodie collaborated on the video, a vividly colourful, collage-style animation with strong graphics and surrealist references.

The band’s drummer and producer Dave Maclean found Brodie’s work online, and says he was instantly a big fan of his “graphic style and influences from rave flyers and DIY punk aesthetics”. Dave’s idea was to make Brodie’s posters come to life in a video, so he put him in touch with SKG to animate them.

“He wanted to create a sort of poster world, that the band is trapped within,” says Brodie. “It takes place in a surreal, mixed-media place, blurring the lines between my static work and Sophie’s animation style. There’s a lot to take in!”

Brodie aimed to reflect the “fun and bouncy” track in his graphics and typography, and make it a bit trippy as a device to combine the two creatives’ styles. For inspiration, Brodie looked to the work of Baldessari and Magritte, and elements of Terry Gilliam can be spotted too, while the video also reminded us of the trippy collage approach in Jimmy Turrell’s Beck video. Brodie planned a colour palette and type style, before pooling together a vast amount of imagery to use in the final film. Brodie then constructed a plethora of compositions, some for guidance and others to be animated, then “let Sophie do her thing”.

The result is an energetic mixture of photographic and drawn animation, bold type, bright block colours and patterns, and retro textures.