Album production

Oddsac is a visual album by Animal Collective featuring psychedelic visuals directed and edited by Danny Perez.

First announced in August 2006, the film took over four years to complete. The band members and director Danny Perez called the 53-minute combination of Perez’s film and Animal Collective’s music a “visual album” or “visual record” in which the visual “scripts” were created to reflect the music and the music was created to reflect the imagery. In the movie, the band members are the main characters. According to the band, the title of the movie is both a pleasant combination of letters and the name of a bag of rubber candy. The world premiere of the film took place at the Sundance Film Festival on January 26, 2010. On August 10, 2010, it was officially released on DVD.

The project was first conceived when Plexifilm approached the band about creating a documentary or concert film. The band decided to approach Perez about making the film, which resulted in Perez going on tour with the band to create some concert footage for the upcoming project. This film was never used, as the band decided to make a movie that would be more in line with “their taste”. During Perez’s tour with Animal Collective, concepts for many scenes for the film that was to become Oddsac were discussed, and filming began shortly thereafter. Many of these concepts were based on ideas the group had been discussing for several years.

The musicians and the director collaborated during the making of the film, and so neither the music nor the film was created independently of any other aspect of the work. This was the concept of the movie from the moment it was created.

That was the goal of what we were going to do. We didn’t want him to make a video and we were making music for him, and we didn’t want him to make a piece of music and just cut a video to go with it. So we did a lot of back and forth, and… both things informed each other. And that’s what we wanted to do.

Many of the sounds created by the band were inspired by images created by Perez, and Perez’s images often changed in response to the band’s new music and sounds. The film was shot outdoors in what was conceived as an “alien landscape.” The sound from the film footage was not used due to its low quality and the noise of the generator used on the outdoor set.