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With members split between New York City and the small town of Beverly Massachusetts, The Jaguar Club have been making indie rock with post punk and electronic leanings since 2006.  The band has released 3 EPs, an LP and several singles over the years.  Following the release of 'Close' in early 2015 they toured extensively, playing clubs, theaters, festivals, and dive bars throughout the US and UK.  Having recently completed some US touring supporting Scottish rockers Idlewild, the band is busily writing and recording a full length LP. 

The song 'Hard Cider' is taken from the 'Close' EP and was animated/directed by The Jaguar Club's lead singer William Popadic.

JOSETTE asked William about his process and his inspiration for the video:

"My original idea was sort of a riff on The Seventh Seal, and I was going to shoot a bunch of B&W Super 8 of my friend Dave (who is Swedish and doesn't not look like a young Max von Sydow) walking around smoldering ruins with a sword.  It eventually became clear that the look I had in mind was going to be sort of impossible with the limitations I had as far as time, crew, and budget. 

So I started thinking about it as stop motion animation, which I have real love for and have dabbled in a bit prior to making this.  I had the first tracking shot (which is kinda Citizen Kane inspired) in my mind and then the 'story' (such as it is) came from there.  I watched a lot of Roman Polanski's B&W movies while I was planning it out, especially Cul de Sac, Macbeth, and Repulsion.  Once I started in earnest it took me about 4 months to make, working at night mostly in my damp basement. 

It was roughly storyboarded but I did let myself improvise quite a bit as I was shooting, which is one of the things I have come to really enjoy about stop motion as opposed to drawn animation.  My process was basically just lots of hours in the basement, and lots of trips to the local art supplies store.  I shot with a DSLR controlled by this really buggy software on my mac because I was too cheap to buy the good stuff.  The live action/drawn memory scenes were shot in a forest near my house and drawn on an iPad app.  The look of white drawings over B&W footage was something I had wanted to mess around with for awhile, and when I was searching for a way to set the memories apart from the story line it seemed like a nice fit.  It took forever, but it was really enjoyable to make and I'm eager to do more of it. 

Stop motion filmmaking is this great mix of movies and theater, where you simultaneously get to be the DP, the production designer, the effects crew, and still do all of the acting! I'm about to head back into the basement for a full year to work on a new stop motion film (not a music video) with a ton of sets and more expressive characters, and I'll definitely be heeding the lessons learned making Hard Cider."