Look familiar? Wollongong animator Tyrone McCrystal went to great lengths to make authentic this animated video clip for a local band’s new song, celebrating the Port Kembla nightlife of the ’80s. Image: Tyrone McCrystal.
It doesn’t get more Wollongong than Cruisin’ to the Nightlife – a song by local rock band The Dark Clouds with a recently released video clip animated, edited and directed by Wollongong screen and media trainer Tyrone McCrystal.
The clip, which was two years in the making, is a gritty ode to the Port Kembla nightlife of the 1980s featuring instantly recognisable landmarks and fascinating “local” characters.
It’s this hyper-local link that compelled Tyrone to take the gig on.
“I was at La La La’s one night to see The Dark Clouds play and they approached me about the job to animate a film clip for the song,” he says.
”I was hesitant – it was more than four minutes long. Hand-drawn animation is painstaking and laborious, and I knew it would take years. But when they told me what the song was about and their ideas for the video clip, I was instantly hooked on the concept of depicting Port Kembla in an animated form; something I’m sure hadn’t been done before.
“I’ve grown up in Wollongong all my life, and love incorporating it into anything I do.”
Tyrone, who teaches film, editing, scriptwriting and animation at Illawarra ITeC, was given complete creative control with a brief to incorporate “heavy ’80s vibes” into the clip.
He landed on a concept that spliced live footage of the band playing the song at Wollongong’s Dicey Riley’s and animation featuring distinct Port Kembla landmarks like the steelworks.
“When I first started work on this video clip in 2021, nobody wanted to do anything in Port Kembla. Over the years, it’s grown in popularity and now it’s a bit of a hub for creativity,” he says.
“It’s a very unique place with interesting characteristics that make excellent backdrops. You have the harbour and beautiful beaches but also the gritty and grimy. The latter is what I tried to replicate for Cruisin’ to the Nightlife.”
In the clip, viewers will spot seedy yet familiar streets, dramatic drag races and even witness the literal fall of Port Kembla’s iconic smokestack, all to the classic rock stylings of The Dark Clouds.
Keen eyes will be able to spot more idiosyncratic Port Kembla references throughout.
“The main character, I based his shirt off an original Steelers jersey,” Tyrone says. “I had a lot of fun finding ways to incorporate local references into the clip.”
Though it’s only just released, viewers would be forgiven for thinking someone had ripped a genuine ’80s clip off a VHS. The truth is, while most modern-day productions obsessed over achieving the highest picture quality possible, Tyrone went to great lengths to lower the resolution in Cruisin’ to the Nightlife.
For the animation style, he drew inspiration from Footrot Flats – a New Zealand comic strip that reached the height of popularity in the ’80s – and used Adobe After Effects, Blender and rotoscoping to give it a grainy aesthetic.
While six cameras were set up at Dicey Riley’s on the night of the live-gig filming, Tyrone chose the recording that fit best.
“Given it was live, I knew I only had one shot so I went with the six-camera set-up. But one of them, the ISO [light sensitivity] was up really high, which gave it a lot of grain and noise,” he says.
“I later recorded the clip onto a VHS tape to get an authentic ’80s quality throughout the clip.”
You can check out Cruisin’ to the Nightlife now.
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