A couple of barbers are having a slow day at work. Until one barber uses his iPhone to take a portrait of a customer’s new haircut, then hangs it up in the shop window. Everyone who sees the portrait can’t help but stop and stare, and soon more and more customers flood into the shop wanting their own fantastic new look. The story unfolds in a series of haircuts and portraits that happen in quite magical ways. One hairstyle leads seamlessly to the next, creating a faster pace, with an escalating sense of fun and surprise.

Barbers was a simple script that the director embellished with simple in-camera tricks to keep the narrative as entertaining as possible. Techniques used include match-cutting of before and after haircuts, match-cutting between actors and their framed photographs, and slightly dodgy live action stop frame animation.

The director took a slightly impressionistic approach to telling this story, using visual elements of magic not entirely grounded in reality. Yes, each magical effect was created in ways that look and feel more practical than computer generated. The director also tightly planned and crafted the entire visual story to edit quite precisely with the song, Fantastic Man. Each sequence of haircut photos work together to create a cause and effect narrative, where one thing leads nicely to the next, causing the action to culminate into a faster and faster pace, with an escalating sense of fun.