Low-Poly Stop-Motion Takes Flight In Stefano Bertelli’s ‘Don’t Make It A Song’ Music Vid

Set against a backdrop of soulful retro grooves, “Don’t Make it a Song,” a music video for Canal Power Club, is a breezy, funk-infused stop-motion piece.

The video takes us aboard an empty plane en route to nowhere and everywhere at once. A relationship has ended, and the journey forward is uncertain— rocky, emotional, and deeply human.

Italian director Stefano Bertelli’s use of handcrafted paper elements, in his signature “low-poly” style, subtly echoes the emotional core of the song. Fragile, foldable, and easily torn, the paper medium becomes a metaphor for love itself: beautiful in motion, vulnerable in essence.

Bertelli started making amateur films with friends at 16 and entered the music video scene in 2002. Since then, he’s directed videos for both national and international artists, winning a Webby Award in 2021.

Since 2014, he’s focused entirely on stop-motion paper animation, a technique he first experimented with back in 1997. He now works with major record labels, creating official videos for artists like Eminem, Pink Floyd, Robbie Williams, Amy Lee, Lindsey Stirling, Sebastián Yatra, and Zooey Deschanel’s band, She & Him.

His short film Acid Space marked the shift from traditional videos to his unique paper animation style.