Jont Openheart, our favourite displaced Englishman of the musical persuasion, along with his band, The Infinite Possibility, have released their newest single today. The namesake ‘Big Open Heart’ is a manifesto—an anthem—paired with an animation that’s a little bit literal and a lot metaphorical.
Director Matteo Serafini had collaborated before on their big hit ‘Someone To Love Me’. The video was filmed while Jont was touring in Rome and featured him dancing barefoot through the city, sufficiently summarizing the outward manifestations of lanky Englishman for all of posterity.
Openheart says that he was so pleased with the final product that he was thrilled when Serafini approached him with an idea for ‘Big Open Heart’. Serafini traded in his hat to act as art director and brought in a three person team of animation team (Rebecca Gabbar, Cristina Damiani, Veronica Del Guerzo) to create visually stunning video that is practically a poem in itself.
“They showed me a few drawings, but most of all we talked,” says Openheart. “We went out to a field outside Rome where we shot a brief shot that would appear at the end of the video. The idea is that this is an animation of my heart. Of the heart. Of the journey of the heart, I guess to some extent the journey of the soul. But words don’t really do it justice.”
“It was made without any commercial concerns. There was no record company breathing down my neck and no need to try too hard—to try to desperately lure or retain the viewer. It’s gradual and subtle and personally I feel it has a really charming, appealing visual poetry that corresponds very harmoniously with the sense of what is being said. The money shot at the end might be low key for a modern day pop vid, but I think we will look back on it in years to come and say “wow, that was a really good video…”.
Italian audiences got an early treat with an advance showing of the video alongside a live concert. ‘Big Open Heart’ is now the third video from Jont & The Infinite Possibility to be filmed in Rome (alongside ‘The Best Things‘ and ‘Someone To Love Me‘) and the fifth video from An Old Innocence. Openheart also teases that there are still two more videos to come.