Nothing's Going To Happen

Tall Dwarfs , Music Video – 1981

from the EP Three Songs EP (1981)

Chris Knox mines his immediate, 1981-era surroundings for this elaborate stop-motion clip. Record players go crazy, sleeping bags swallow people, and hardly anyone on screen seems to have a face. On the telly are Springboks and protests, plus the Ready to Roll top 20 countdown. And all this unravels a full two decades before editing programme Final Cut Pro made homespun hip again, and directors like Michel Gondry (The Science of Sleep) started popularising the craft aesthetic. The song was featured on the first Tall Dwarfs EP, Three Songs.

[The clip was] inspired by people like particularly Norman McLaren and Len Lye, whose stuff I'd seen as a kid . . . they had both animated in camera and without camera, and both those things became quite a thread throughout my clip-making.
– Chris Knox on his inspirations for the stop motion animation in this music video, in part two of his ScreenTalk interview