People either love or hate Los Angeles. It’s not the kind of city that evokes a neutral response. But whichever camp you’re in, you are likely to be enchanted by “Leaving LA,” a zoetrope music video starring the music of Tim Minchin and the animation wizardry of Tee Ken Ng. If, like most viewers, you want to know how this iPhone 11 movie was made, click the link to a making-of video below. (Spoiler alert: The production took one year!)

Behind the Scenes of “Leaving LA”

You don’t need to know much to enjoy “Leaving LA.” The song speaks for itself and the animation is simply astonishing. But for inquiring minds…

The song: Australian Tim Minchin—a composer, comedian, actor, and filmmaker—had been brought to Los Angeles to work on a major animation project. More than 100 people were working on the production which, after four years, was suddenly cancelled. The emotions Minchin felt as a result led to his writing the song.

Paper cut outs: On his blog, Ng explained the design decision to use paper cutouts: “When Tim first approached me to collaborate with him and played me his track ‘Leaving LA’ about the two dimensionality of Hollywood (amongst other things), we discussed animating with cut outs and paper models. We both felt that paper construction was a fitting medium to depict a place of superficiality and facades.”

Zoetrope: From the same blog post: We created 12 zoetropes for the video. All the frames of animation were captured from footage we shot across 2 days in Sydney of Tim and his band. Every frame was then printed and cut out from paper and arranged and glued down in sequence around the circumference of the zoetrope discs. The lamppost zoetrope required over 100 individual lampposts and Tim singing in the car required 478 printed cutouts. By spinning the zoetropes on record players at a fixed speed (33 1/3 rpm or 45 rpm) and filming them at a fixed frame rate (12 fps or 24 fps) the animations appear to spring to life in front of you! We knew we needed to capture this magical transformation in the opening scene of the video which would transport the viewer into the ‘zoetrope world.’Each zoetrope is essentially made up of various looping animations; a walk cycle, for example, is one loop. Each loop is actually less than 2 seconds long but our ability to film the zoetropes as live action (as opposed to stop motion) meant we could move the camera freely around and inside them as they animated in real time. This allowed the camera and motion to do a lot of the story telling in the way we framed, isolated, revealed, and tracked elements of the animation.”

Smartphone shooting: And again from Ng’s blog: “Faced with the technical challenge of filming something rotating at speed whilst dangling a camera in the middle of it, alongside all the usual considerations, we ultimately  decided the best camera to use was an iPhone 11. Combined with the right apps and processes, the phone is an impressive filmmaking tool and its small footprint allowed us to get shots a standard camera could never have gotten.  Working with something that people carry around in their pocket felt like a perfect fit for the entire DIY ethos of the project.”

Behind the scenes video: To see how Ng and his team actually created what might be the world’s first zoetrope music video, here’s the BTS.

Lyrics and Glossary: The lyrics of “Leaving LA” include many place names that might not resonate with outsiders. For example, he sings “I wander through the Bronson Caves.” To help non-Angelenos connect, Minchin provides  the lyrics plus a helpful glossary here. (For those impatient to know about the Bronson Caves, that’s a location used in many Hollywood B movies, such as the original “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”)

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The editors of MobileMovieMaking have chosen “Leaving LA” as the Mobile Movie of the Week.