Stop-motion cinematography (n.): a special effect, carried out while shooting, in which the performers stop their motion and the camera is stopped while an object or performer is added to or removed from the scene, with camera movement and action then resumed for the remainder of the scene: used to create an illusion of sudden appearance or disappearance of persons or objects.

5) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEtlbQnfhxU

Time to Go – Wax Tailor (feat. Aloe Blacc)

Directed by an Australian film group composed of Darcy Prendergast and Seamus Spilsbury, this music video captures the adventure of a blue crochet octopus made by Julie Ramsden. Despite the strange concept of an octopus, the video actually seems to have a chilling story. The first minute and 45 seconds appear light and happy with an octopus running around turning everything it touches blue, but the conclusion turns a bit dark. Regardless of the storyline, the photography and artistic nature of this video has the ability to encapture anyone.

4) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF8PSGl-aIY

Young – The Paper Kites

This uniquely made music video features over 4,000 portraits and 350 faces. The Indie/Alternative artist, the Paper Kites, worked together with film team, “Oh Yeah Wow”, to pull this project together. Each face pronounces part of a syllable with his or her lips and when the individual portraits are joined together, a lyrical composition is produced that is perfectly synced to the words of the song.

3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_HXUhShhmY

Her Morning Elegance – Oren Lavie

Israeli singer and songwriter, Oren Lavie, produced his own music video to his single, ‘Her Morning Elegance,’ with film team, One Wing Fly. Shir Shomron, an Israeli actress, plays the main role in this simple video conducted by Lavie. The video itself follows a girl (Shomron) going about her daily routine lying down on a bed through 3,225 still photos. The shooting took 2 days and a total of 4 weeks prior to the filming for pre-production to lay out their ideas for the video.

2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3pJZSTQqIg

Strawberry Swing – Coldplay

This animated stop motion tells the story of Chris Martin saving a princess from a large squirrel–now give me a moment to explain. Following a simple “damsel in distress” storyline, this music video was done for Coldplay’s song, Strawberry Swing, in 2009.  While it does not have any correlation to the song’s lyrics, the art portrayed within it is stunning, to say the least. Composed of chalk drawings on a floor, this music video was directed by Shynola, a group of visual artists based in London. Richard Kenworthy, a member of Shynola, described the video as, “nonsensical and almost dream-like” in an interview on Coldplay’s website.

1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOu0DuxFAT0

In Your Arms – Kina Grannis

Think jellybeans.  In fact, think of 288,000 of them! Directed by Greg Jardin, this handmade music video took 22 months and 30 people to complete. Inspired by paintings made entirely of jellybeans, Jardin, the director, set out to accomplish something similar with Kina Grannis’ music video. Utilizing various and colorful flavors of jellybeans, Jardin was able to create a backdrop or scenery for Grannis to “walk” through. The designing process required long hours of storyboarding and animation. When the team established what they wanted to appear on the video through storyboarding, they created a graphic representation with the whole video layed out. Then they projected the animated video onto a table in which they aligned the corresponding colors of jellybeans for each frame (there were 2,460 frames in total). The hard work and hours pay off in a rewarding musical and artistic composition that has garnered almost 10 million views on Youtube.

Watch how it was made here: http://youtu.be/cIH4MJAC2Tg