Synopsis

A surreal stream of thread winds through Toronto streets, outdoor spaces, and wintry landscapes, moving as if it has a life of its own. The animated strands crawl, coil, and pass through a human figure, creating a tactile visual counterpart to Levine's song about memory, travel, beginnings, endings, and the connections linking the living and the dead. Split-screen compositions, stop-motion movement, and the rough texture of analog film give the short video a handmade, dreamlike quality.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was photographed in Toronto using a LomoKino camera and 35mm film, giving it its deliberately grainy, flickering appearance.

• The project began with the camera itself. Matt Skwid chose the LomoKino specifically to shoot "Long Spun Thread."

• Approximately 21 rolls of film were used. Every frame was cropped by hand, and the complete video took more than 100 hours to finish.

• The film was processed and scanned at Downtown Camera. The sequences were assembled in QuickTime, edited in Final Cut Pro, and released without color correction.

• The production used film stocks rated at 100, 400, and 800 ISO, contributing to variations in brightness and texture across the footage.

• The video's thread imagery reflects the song's recurring ideas of unraveling, spinning, traveling, and connection. Its handmade technique turns those themes into a physical visual process rather than a conventional narrative.

• The video was selected for the 2013 Sprockets Music Video Festival in the United States and the ARS Independent festival in Poland.

• The album version of "Long Spun Thread" was released in 2010 and grew out of a year-long collaboration between Gabe Levine and producer Sandro Perri.