Meester Fly meets LynnFox
- the darling of interviews meets the darling of architects -
maker of Nature is Ancient video
It's been long, way too long, since I have had the pleasure to bee booked to do an interview with 3 laidies. One of them is called Lynn and is Fox. The others I do not know the names of, but I guess I will have the pleasure to learn their names with instance of meeting them. Such is my nature, not to forget a name or a face. Lynn Fox I am sure had one of the main parts in that Crouching Tiger film of a few years ago.
My travel take me to Reykjavík, Iceland to meet Lynn Fox, where she is meeting Björk. She has just done a video to Nature Is Ancient for her. Hah? She for her! Djeez, do I sound a bit like Austin Powers? Nah, probably never.
There I am, in the lobby, twisting, rather twitching as I am to meet Lynn Fox, who could be a foxy laidiee indeed. No show yet, so I sit at the bar. I introduce myself as who I am, to those present at the bar, as I always do. I am recognized instantly as the one and only Meester Fly. & who might they be?
  
But of course the The Foxy Boys also known as LynnFox, the ultimate boys band.
'Yikes' goes screeching through my mind, and around and down my back into my wings and flutter. Another flutter.

Bien sur, I say, in French, Of course, I say in English LynnFox, as I always knew I mutter. There I am in company of the Foxy Boys, and I feel fine. Again. Nature is Ancient to me, I will survive.


Taken by surprise I do need a couple of things straightened out before we continue so I ask:Who are these guys?
LynnFox are Patrick Chen, Bastian Glassner and Christian McKenzie, three foxy females!
I guess Patrick answers. Well I would not bet my life policy though on that, no way, next you will bee telling me that you are based in the heart of London and are a relatively young company formed in October 2001 with the intention of making videos.
Am I psychic or what in my relatively older age? No, they actually told me this, as I sat on my stool at the bar in the hotel in Reykjavik.		    
  It sounded though as I was having a bit of outer-body experience, or out of body. Or was I thinking too heavily about the video of Nature is Ancient? I might have. I pulled myself together. It was interview time: straight up and the recorder on:
Meester Fly why choose Nature Is Ancient?
 LynnFox
We met Paul from One Little Indian back in October 2001 but at that stage we still only had the work we had done as architecture students. Whenever we had finished a piece we would send him over a copy to keep everyone in the loop. When Bjork had a project she called us up. We were having a barbeque at the time.
Nature is Ancient was Björk's choice. I think the organic aspects of our work fuse well with the lyrics.
  Meester Fly
- what software do you work with?		  
LynnFox
We use Maya, Photoshop, After Effects and Premiere for our work. For Nature is Ancient we required additional tools to achieve the look we were after.
Revolutionary new software was developed by Glassworks, which uses particles to create forms rather than conventional nurbs or polygon geometry. These particle skins are used to make up the delicate amniotic membranes and chorion layers. They bring an incredible organic roughness to the central characters, which would be very hard to achieve using traditional modelling techniques.		  
LynnFox
It took about 4 months from the first phonecall to final delivery. Of that period about 10 weeks were spent just developing the final look of the piece before a second of animation was made.
Meester Fly
- how long did it take to make?
Meester Fly
- what research did you have to make in order to create the video?
    
  LynnFox
Apart from all the technical research to do with how we were actually going to make the thing, we looked at amazing scientific photography by Lennart Nilsson. In a book called 'A Child is Born' he has photographed human embryos fetuses at every stage of development which are absolutely incredible and like another world. We also looked at Oxford Scientific films of chicken embryo's and David Attenborough's 'Blue Planet' series.
Meester Fly
- is the final video similar to the storyboard?
LynnFox
Quite close but it was a struggle!
MeesterFly
- what's in the future for lynnfox?
X
LynnFox
We would like to extend our technical palette by making steps into more live-action work. In general though, we really enjoy working closely with the musicians that we admire and perhaps we could even work with an artist from scratch on a short film type project.

Geebee, (hmmm? sounds familiar: geebee), this time has definately bee-n well spent, I do not need to meet any LynnFox, you guys are warm. Like the video, sort of homely. Before you leave one or two things could you describe intimately describe the video and what the creatures are in the video?
  
  LynnFox
well we can share with you the treatment of the video. If you want? Email it to you, and then you could hyperlink to it on your site. Or your madwebcarpenters could.

They would. They will. Right here.The Treatment to Nature is Ancient.
something to read before or after the video. The video is a bit further down the page!

 
     
This is the best, I guess. So Foxy Boys, finally, if you got to make another video for another Björk song, which would it be and what would the video be like?
LynnFox, LynnFox and LynnFox:
One step at a time Meester Fly!








here is the video:
  


NATURE is ANCIENT





This video is presented using MPEG-4 - the very latest in streaming technology.
To be able to watch this video you need to have QuickTime 6 installed.
If you don't have it that's no biggie as you can grab a copy for free from Apple.

The song Nature is Ancient is available on Björk's Family Tree album currently out,
and will also be available on Volumen 1993-2003- the complete video collection.
Out on the 2nd of December.



© bjork.com 2002