“I began with the thought that this would simply be John drifting in and out of sleep, flowing between wakefulness and memory and peppered with surreal moments, dipping into the history of The Beatles […],” Em says. “But the meanings of the film soon began to spread out, encompassing The Beatles’ anti-war feelings, and reflecting on our place in the world.” The animator continues: “It was a project that I felt an immediate spark for right from the word go, and somehow that momentum carried me right through to the end. […] The song itself evokes such a mesmerising, languid, dreamy state, in a way my job was only to follow its lead with a paintbrush in my hand.”
Both videos employ entirely different styles and techniques. Em Cooper achieves a distinctive fluid effect for I’m Only Sleeping by hand-painting every frame. The entire process took months to complete and entailed Em working on an animation rostrum on sheets of celluloid, producing a total of 1300 oil paintings. The result hopes to explore the space between dreaming and wakefulness: