Sean Pecknold

It comes as a genuine shock when halfway through his interview with Boards, 28-year-old Sean Pecknold quietly shares that he is a seasoned After Effects artist. For some reason the idea of the soft-spoken director as a computer whizz sits at odds with the woodsy stop-motion of the beautiful Fleet Foxes video “White Winter Hymnal” or the surreal but painstakingly handmade BBC spot “Knowledge”.

“I did After Effects freelance for a long time,” reveals the Seattle-based Pecknold, saying that he tested out the timing of the beautifully abstract “Mykonos” video for Fleet Foxes (his brother Robin is the lead singer) and the BBC job entirely in the program, before carefully creating them for real. “But it’s so much better if I can get a shot from the camera and have it pretty much done and composited so it’s just grading and rig removal. I still lean towards the true optics of a real camera, and it’s more of a challenge to make something compelling in-camera than just composite a bunch of stuff together. I’ve definitely done both, but when I look back I appreciate the in-camera stuff more. I think it’s harder, so why not try?”

At a time when animation and filmmaking is about speed and efficiency, Pecknold’s in-camera approach might seem obstinate, but that time-consuming way of doing things reflects his nostalgic sensibility and timeless, do-it-yourself aesthetic. “I watched the Carl Sagan Cosmos series all last year on Netflix,” he says. “Just the questioning curiosity of the ’70s and ’80s science programs was really appealing. I’m also inspired by  the style of children’s TV shows from the ’70s and ’80s.”

His craft-based style lends itself to the folk music renaissance of recent years: Grizzly Bear’s video “While You Wait For The Others” owes much in its surreal subject matter and sepia hues to the work of stop-motion pioneer Jan Spankmeyer, while “White Winter Hymnal” is a tribute to the dusty old dioramas found at the Natural History Museum.

Considering the fantastic, almost psychedelic nature of his work, Pecknold’s early influences and jobs are another surprise. “I was really into documentary film, like the Maysles brothers,” he says. “That’s where it started, then I got a job editing the bloopers reel for the Seattle Mariners around 2002. It was tape-to-tape and hilarious. It was also terrible. That kind of got me hooked.” The rise of motion graphics in Seattle in the early ’00s saw him gravitate towards directing and, specifically, animation in ’03 and ’04: “I was really more interested in that. I had been doing a lot of photography stuff and started shooting short films and moving things around and discovered [with animation] you could do a lot with a tiny budget and minimal crew.” A series of acclaimed music videos for Fleet Foxes, Grizzly Bear, Elvis Perkins In Dearland, and recently, Beach House, followed, and Boards profiled him as a Director To Watch in September last year. He signed to Rokkit early in 2010.

A travel junky – “It keeps me awake. It’s easy to get dull if you’re in one place for any time” – he’s as restless creatively as he is geographically, with each video wildly different thematically from the last. Nonetheless, they all maintain his style, a certain aged look and handmade feel. He’s currently working on an experimental short series. “Me and a couple of people go to a city, country or town and collaborate with an artist and create an art piece or film. It would be an online episodic series, not like a travel series, more poetic. With restrictions: it has to be produced there with people there and the majority of it has to be done in that town.”

He’s already planning a music video for Fleet Foxes’ new record, out he hopes by the end of the year. Unsurprisingly, it’s going to be laborious but resolutely faithful to his aesthetic. “I’ve been wanting to do some handheld stop-motion for a long time,” he explains, “which is kind of a pain but I like the organic quality to it.” Q

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