Airbnb's Magical Minatare Worlds Take Us to the Northern Lights
Directors Jack Cunningham and Nicolas Ménard teamed up to create a series of charming stop motion vignettes in time for the holiday season. Joining forces with Airbnb, the mini films depict real experiences and locations available through their platforms, with all four delightful scenes made to the scale of the Airbnb Gift Card.
Viewers are invited into four different settings including an Alpine ski lodge, viewing the ethereal Northern Lights to a three horse trail ride and family reunion. Lovingly created using the stop-frame 'replacement animation' technique, the films are rich in authenticity whilst retaining a handmade aesthetic. As the project developed the team devised creative and sometimes unlikely hacks to achieve the end results. In the Northern Lights scene, Jack and Nicolas, alongside their DOP Ian Forbes, ended up attaching cotton wool to fishing string to capture the blooming nature of chimney smoke against the magical night sky.
As the stars of the show, each character had its own journey pre-shoot, from pencil sketch through to 3D modelling and printing. The transfer from pixels to plastic was all meticulously managed by Nicolas and Jack's skilled team.
Jack Cunningham and Nicolas Ménard, Directors, Nexus Studios:
“The shoot was a blast. Clapham Road feels more like being at a uni filled to the brim with talented, like minded creatives. All the stresses of a shoot are comforted by a supportive network of crew working at the top of their game. So when you realize that Horse 3A is missing a pose from its walk cycle, it's not the end of the world, and there will be a fix.”
