Watch the animated video for Leaving LA

Tim Minchin today releases the first single from his debut studio album, Leaving LA.

The track – which he performed on his UK tour dates last year – is described as ‘bittersweet, sardonic and poignant break-up song’ with the place he called home for four years.

It was inspired by his heartbreaking experiences in California, when Dreamworks pulled the plug on his $90million animated film  Larrikin, his Broadway musical Groundhog Day closed after six months.

He said: ‘Leaving LA was written in my final year living there. It is meant to reflect the bitterness I felt when the project I had been working on for four years got trashed. 

‘But it’s also meant to feel a bit sad, and a bit funny, and a bit fond. It’s bittersweet; like a break-up song written for somebody you’re still a little in love with.

‘The perceived glamour of Hollywood is laughable once you’ve lived inside it. Don’t get me wrong, there are brilliant people there making wonderful art, but it’s pretty damn ugly to look at, shamelessly materialistic (obviously), and full of desperate - and desperately unhappy - people. 

‘It’s also full of tourists leering at obscene houses, and frantically searching for a good spot from which to take a photo of an old real estate sign. 

‘I try my best to steer clear of clichés, but the famous sign felt to me like an unexploited metaphor: it, like the town it teeters above, is iconic, unique, two-dimensional… and, if you’re expecting glamour, a bit disappointing.’

Accompanied by a ‘film video’ that took thousands of hours to make, Tim worked with his Minchin’s childhood friend Tee Ken Ng has made a video to accompany the son.

The comedian said: ‘The film has taken thousands of hours to make, and has become a project that not only enhances the song, but utterly transcends it. It is one of the most wonderful pieces of animation I have ever seen – and that’s coming from someone who was directing a $90million animated feature film in Hollywood for four years!’

Ng adds: ‘When Tim first approached me to collaborate with him and played me his track Leaving LA about the two dimensionality of Hollywood (amongt 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."

‘At the time I was heavily into creating designs for vinyl records and DJ slip mats that, when viewed through a camera while being spun on a turntable, would animate. The zoetrope dates back to 1833 and is basically a cylindrical variation of this pre-film technique… 

‘We created 12 zoetropes for the video. All the frames of animation were captured from footage we shot across two days in Sydney of Tim and his band. Every frame had to be printed and cut out from paper and arranged and glued down in sequence around the circumference of the zoetrope discs/

‘The lamppost zoetrope required more than  100 individual lampposts and Tim singing in the car required 478 printed cutouts. 

‘Faced with the technical challenge of filming something rotating at speed whilst dangling a camera in the middle of it, we ultimately decided the best camera to use was an iPhone 11.

‘Working with something that people carry around in their pocket felt like a perfect fit for the entire DIY ethos of the project.’

Minchin’s as-yet untitled album will be released by BMG later this year.

Published: 13 Mar 2020