Blindfaller
Mandolin Orange – Blindfaller
Designer — Scott McCormick
Role — Art Direction | Photography | Design | Help Naming Album
Date — June 2016
I was lucky enough to work several times with one of my favorite bands, Mandolin Orange. This is about how we made the imagery and brand revolving around their album “Blindfaller.”
The Holy Old Mackinaw
The name fitted Bangor, Maine, and so did the hymn itself, although the loggers probably did not realize how well:
The Flowering Of A Lumber Town
Hark from the tombs a doleful sound;
Mine ears attend the cry –
Y living men, come view the ground
Where ye must shortly die.
Blindfaller
About the project
We approached this album when it was in its infant stages – in fact, it didn’t yet have a name. After digging up a book called “The Holy Old Mackinaw” published in 1936 (or ’37) by the first lumberjack-turned-writer, I was able to help the process of titling this masterpiece. We walked through over 50 potential titles based on the glossary in the back of the wonderful book. “Blindfaller” came from a juxtaposition of a couple terms we stumbled on and it stuck.
We knew we wanted something based around the woods and we loved the idea of showing a wooded area being decimated by fire for regrowth. I made a miniature model and lit the entire thing with Christmas lights and a fog machine/dry ice.
How I made the miniature
I built a forest of leafless trees with patches of bushes and green grass. The original concept had one single red tree growing from the aftermath of a fire, however, as we continued to shoot, we all gravitated more to the act of burning to create the impetus for change. The trees are made of tiny branches I collected mounted on styrofoam and covered with a grassy top and several bushes. I lit it with a row of Christmas lights and blasted the whole miniature with fog and dry ice – dry ice tends to hang around the ground while fog lifts quickly.
Our other shoots
Designer — Scott McCormick
Role — Art Direction | Photography
Date — May 2015-2017
