An Animated Romance: Raman Djafari Discusses the International Collaboration Behind Coldplay’s New Music Video

Capturing the emotion behind a popular song and translating it into a visual story is a familiar challenge to music video directors. Add in the artistic challenges and endless possibilities of animation and you get another level of complexity. Now, multiply that by the individual interpretations, visions and techniques of 15 different auteur animators around the world, and you have the directorial hill Raman Djafari climbed to oversee and deliver the new Coldplay music video, “feelslikeimfallinginlove.”

The MV, which has racked up more than 600,000 views on YouTube since premiering on July 22, takes the single from Coldplay’s upcoming 10th studio album Moon Music as a backing to colorful, surreal love-story vignettes. Artists such as Niki Lindroth von Bahr (Sweden), Ram Han (Korea) and Tokay (Switzerland) and Djafari (Germany) crafted segments for the video in mediums ranging from felted puppets, stop-motion, cut-out, digital and hand-painted 2D. Here’s what the director had to share about this global project:

“This community is so rich in talent and I feel so blessed to be a part of it.”

Animation Magazine: Can you tell us how you got involved with the project?

I am lucky to be on the roster of Blinkink’s directors. As I have directed many music videos in the past years as well as several mixed media projects, they asked me to pitch on this Coldplay music video.

Did you realize you were going to incorporate different types of animation from the beginning or did that decision evolve organically?

The idea to incorporate different animation styles was part of the initial brief from Coldplay. It felt like an opportunity to realize a big mixed-media project with many of the animators who’s work I love and wanted to bring together, showcasing the amazing artists working in animation today to a mainstream audience.

How long did it take and how many people worked on it overall?

The deadline was incredibly tight. From award to delivery the schedule originally was little more than six weeks, in the end we had a bit more time than expected, though.

I directly started storyboarding the film, developing the scenes for all the different styles. In the end there were a couple of the resulting 15 different animation sections that involved more than one person on the team. Then there were storyboarders to help me clean up my sketches and an animatic editor, several compositors, producers and a sound designer. So, all in all somewhere around 35 people.

How did you manage to work with so many great artists worldwide?

For the past couple of years, I’ve travelled to animation festivals across the globe, followed the work of countless animators online and was lucky enough to meet some of them, many of whom became good friends. I invited some of these people to this project, artists I have seen grow and develop their own unique approach and refine it over the years as well as animators who I have always looked up to and now can call peers and friends. This community is so rich in talent and I feel so blessed to be a part of it. It was a genuine joy to finally be able to work with some of these great people.

In many ways this video is about highlighting 14 of these incredible animators and the medium of animation itself. The animators who joined me on this project are: Tokay, Dante Zaballa, Martin Robic, KINEMUS, Jack Zhang, Niki Lindroth von Bahr, Moera.cf, Gaia Esther Maria, Aaron Fisher, Karlotta Freier, Isabel Garrett, Hannah van der Weide, Kohana Wilson and Ram Han.

My attempt was to create a framework for all the animators that would allow them to express themselves with their individual style while keeping the narrative and direction coherent. I curated a list of animators, each of them distinct in their visual language but unified in their ability to capture genuine emotion and a sense of warmth and honesty. For each one of them, I came up with a scene and a pair of characters and then developed their scene idea further together with them. In some cases, I provided sketches and designs for characters and props, for others I shared references and then again for some the scene changed quite a bit from my original storyboards. The collaboration with each animator was different and I am so thankful for every single one of their contributions. It was a lot of fun to see each scene developing parallel to each other and trying to direct everyone towards the vision of the video without stifling everyone’s individual approach and creativity.

Because each animator required different kinds of feedback and because many of them are scattered throughout the globe, coordinating and bringing them together was challenging — but a lot of fun. From the very beginning, I tailored every scene toward the particular style and approach of each animator. I enjoyed trying to see this video through the lens of their craft and presenting them with the scene I came up with for them. The transitions were another fun challenge that stemmed from the need to blend all these styles seamlessly. I tried to find surprising changes in animation style and bring them together through a transition that was specific to each scene idea and technique.

What was the toughest challenge overall?

Probably the scheduling, as it related to when we could start building the transitions. Even though I had each transition planned out from the beginning we could only start quite late, because we needed the corresponding frames from each animator’s section. I was super lucky to have the producer Alex Handschuh and co-producer Jon Mealing, planning out the schedule meticulously and an amazing lead compositor in John Malcom Moore, who led a team of compositors, who brought all these transitions to life.

What do you love about the final version?

I am really proud of this project because I really feel like it’s a love letter to the medium of animation and a showcase of some of the many incredible people working today. I really hope this video will spark a sense of wonder and fascination for the medium of animation in the audience so that they check out everyone involved in this project and start following their work and hopefully discover even more animation beyond that.

Was the band Coldplay completely blown away by it? How did you collaborate?

They were really happy with how the project turned out. I had a lot of creative freedom in coming up with the ideas for the music video and only had a few notes from them throughout the project.

Who are your biggest animation influences and heroes?

There are many, but the first that come to mind are the late Satoshi Kon as well as the incredible Masaaki Yuasa. Both of them have informed my thinking around the medium from the very beginning and I am eternally grateful for the love they sparked inside of me.

What do you love best about working in animation?

What I love about the medium of animation is that it’s so capable of speaking in the language of our thoughts and emotions. That is, fluently transcending between feelings, changing perspectives, reflecting the way we as people experience the world or even our dreams. I wanted to make a video that expresses this through the many forms animation can take. Animation at its best feels utopian, empathetic and brave to me.

What is your take on the overall state of animation worldwide in 2024?

The indie animation festival circuit looks incredible. So many talented directors from all over the world, bringing their ideas to life and making their voices heard. I also feel like slowly animation is getting more appreciation from a mainstream audience, though there is still an incredibly long way to go.

Regarding the mainstream industry, I am not as involved and can’t really judge it well, as I am not really keeping up, but just from studies I have read about hiring practices and the people in positions of power, it’s still way too straight, white and male-dominated and doesn’t reflect the perspectives and talents working in animation overall.