A Photocopied Zine Comes to Life in Culture Abuse’s Video for “Dip”

A Xerox machine can either be a productive office tool or a source of mischief, depending on how you use it. While nine-to-five drones use them for collating TPS reports or whatever, countless outspoken punks have assembled zines on them by scamming their way through Kinkos. Culture Abuse leaned towards the latter for their video for “Dip,” for which the Bay Area band assembled their own makeshift photocopier, making the video look like an animated punk zine

To get this effect, director Ryan Baxley suspended a giant sheet of plexiglass off the floor, had the band members pose on it, and photographed it from below. At 24 frames per minute, and a three-minute video, that added it up to 4,500 images, which they printed out, fucked up, and scanned back in individually. In total, 4,090 images got used to make the video, along with 14 drums of toner, 400 hours, and—we’re guessing—a shit-ton of papercuts.

“You don't need a lot of money or extravagant sets, an art degree, or even a whole lot of skill. Just the willingness to work hard and make shit,” says Baxley.

The animation is surprisingly smooth considering how much of a pain in the ass it must have been to create manually, but it still has a grimey quality from being torn up, shredded, puked on, spraypainted, and destroyed.

“Dip” is off Culture Abuse’s forthcoming posi-vibed record Bay Dream, out on June 15 from Epitaph Records. We recently caught up with frontman David Kelling to talk about the story behind it. Speaking of the stories behind things (smooth transition, right?), you can check out some behind-the-scenes photos below to see how the “Dip” video was created. Unless you don’t wanna know how the sausage was made. In which case, move along!