Sean Donnelly from Aw+Modest: Exclusive Interview

Sean is filmmaker who works in animation, live action and documentary. He is behind the comedy central show “JEFF and some aliens”, sean also directed music videos for Bo Burnham, Kirk Hammett from Metallica, Tally Hall, The Mountain Goats and recently for ghost, he worked on the aniamtion of “mary on a cross” that is in rite here rite now and the “the future is a foreign land” animation that is on ghost’s youtube page. Sean has also worked on many other things, you can see the full list by clickling here and he is curently working on his own movie releasing soon, called “rip off”.

How did the collaboration with Ghost begin? When did Tobias Forge contact you, and what was your reaction to the project proposal?

My girlfriend, Liz Toonkel, is a talented production designer (Marcel the Shell, Emily the Criminal) who helped design the Ghost pop up at the Whiskey a go go, which was directed by her old college friend Alex Ross Perry. She also designed the Jesus He Knows Me video that Alex also directed. When Alex was co-directing Rite Here Rite Now with Tobias, they wanted to try and make a live action music video for Mary on a Cross to show this part of the story. It was too expensive to pull off all the things Tobias wanted to do, so I think Alex had the idea to do it animated and reached out to me then. I was excited to get to work in this 60’s animation style for such a unique and beloved band. So the short answer is I got the job because of my girlfriend.