After last year’s marvellous Power Rangers-style blockbuster for The Drum, Nobody Beats The Drum bandmember and visual mastermind Rogier van der Zwaag has taken a very different approach for new track Grindin’: making a stop motion video with a huge number of wooden blocks.

4085 photos and 300 wooden blocks later, the new NBTD video is done – and it’s also great. But at what cost? Check out the video, then check out the marvellous making of, where you can discover how Rogier’s exertions have left him a babbling wreck – and where Rogier’s bandmates are faced with an important philosophical question: friendship – or cool video?

“The making of is, of course, pretty exaggerated, but the little room where you see me working was the place where I made it all,” Rogier explains, “And it did cost me a lot of effort and time to put it all together. It was pretty hard just to think in shapes, colors and movement, without anything human in it.

“I think the average harvest of one day’s work was about four seconds – and sometimes nothing. A lot of ideas didn’t work when I tried them. But these four seconds were so magic day after day, that my motivation to finish it was really big. And I’m glad I had enough other work to finance me during this project, haha…”

Nobody Beats The Drum
Grindin’ (100% Halal)
Director/animator: Rogier van der Zwaag
Co-animator: Susie Oosting
Watch: video

making of the video