The archive · Content & Film · Marketing decision · 2022
Animal Collective's We Go Back video builds its world from photogrammetry's lo-fi flaws
Winston Hacking and Michael Enzbrunner made We Go Back from scanned locations, miniature sets and collage cut-outs, keeping photogrammetry's raw lo-fi look.
Animal Collective
What it had to solve
Animal Collective returned with Time Skiffs, its first studio album in over five years, and the single We Go Back. Directors Winston Hacking and Michael Enzbrunner wanted a video whose eerie, handmade feel matched the band's disembodied pop rather than a glossy narrative.
How it works
Animal Collective's We Go Back arrived with Time Skiffs, the band's first studio album in over five years. Directors Winston Hacking and Michael Enzbrunner responded not with a story-led clip but with a visual world built to match the song's eerie, disembodied quality.
The video is composed of scanned locations, miniature sets and collage cut-outs that embrace the lo-fi 3D aesthetic inherent in photogrammetry — the technique of turning overlapping photographs into digital models. Hacking, whose earlier work used 2D cut-out collage, let the process's rough edges show instead of polishing them away.
The result gave the single's rollout an unmistakable visual identity and entered D&AD's awards archive under Music Videos as an example of a craft decision: building the aesthetic from a technique's raw output rather than against it.
Why it lands
- The technique matched the music: photogrammetry's slightly wrong, disembodied spaces echo Animal Collective's eerie, disembodied version of pop.
- It evolved an established style instead of abandoning it — Hacking moved from 2D collage to scanned 3D worlds while keeping the handmade feel.
- The directors turned a production shortcoming into the concept: rather than hide scanning artifacts, they made the lo-fi 3D look the point of the film.
What it did
The video gave We Go Back an unmistakable visual identity, turning a scanning technique's flaws into the film's style, and the work entered D&AD's awards archive under Music Videos.
What you can take
When a technique leaves visible artifacts, decide whether to erase them or make them the style — embracing the imperfection can be what gives the work its identity.
Since then
We Go Back accompanied Time Skiffs' February 2022 release as the album's visual calling card, and it stays in D&AD's awards archive under Music Videos. No view counts are recorded there; what survives is the decision to build a video out of photogrammetry's raw artifacts — scanned locations, miniature sets and collage cut-outs — and to treat the technique's rough, lo-fi look not as a flaw to fix but as the aesthetic itself.
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