Radical Friend Jumps for a Super Rainbow
View Radical Friend’s Dark Bubbles HERE
Spy Films’ Radical Friend completes latest interactive video for Pittsburgh-based band, Black Moth Super Rainbow.
Radical Friend’s BMSR video has been featured in boards, shots, Wired & Urb Magazine, Stereogum, Pitchfork, Motionographer and surprisingly, Kanye West’s blog.
In an interview, RF had this to say:
What was the most difficult element of the project?
RF: A lot of the challenge in this video came in trying to find a balance between fully achieving the mood and look we wanted, while also making it possible for people to actually experience the video (in real-time) without totally freezing their computer. Many standards with visual effects and compositing had to be re-thought in order to achieve this balance, and I think we pulled off what we were going for, although quite a few compromises had to be made for functionality.
How receptive were the band to this idea? Had they ever done anything like this before?
RF: I think BMSR were pretty inspired by what we sent them, they hadn’t seen the Arcade Fire “Neon Bible” video so the idea of making a video you could interact with took them by surprise. The fact that you would be able to physically interact with their video made them very excited, because this kind of Technological Nature Magic goes hand in hand with their sound. When we first started discussing the idea it all seemed like this madman fantasy that wasn’t really possible, so I think they were interested to see if we could actually pull off what we said we could!
Technically how did you put it together?
RF: We had shot several days worth of time-lapse to get exactly what we wanted as far as transition between night and day and lighting shifts. Next our matte painter pain-stakingly expanded on each frame to get the specific foreground landscape and composition we wanted. We then shot the live action elements in a way that would correspond to the lighting shifts. Then all of the 2D/3D animation elements were composited together in Flash (which is by no means meant for any kind of VFX!). Next I put together a very rough interactive skeleton that demonstrated how we wanted the interactivity to work, we then sent this to our Action Script programmer in Toronto which is when the really crazy back and forth insanity began. Eventually we reached a version that would perform correctly on enough computers to have people actually experience this the way we envisioned, and that’s when we sent it to the label.
How did you make sure the different elements – jumping man, landscape, lighting all interacted?
RF: Our cinematographer Kevin Phillips had some brilliant ideas as to how to light the jumper during the shoot that would make it possible to achieve the feel of directional lighting (of the sun) in post, and then also extend that to the viewer once it went interactive. We ended up making a lot of animation layers of just tiny shadows and light play that were programmed to move simultaneously with the time-lapse, so it gives you the feeling that the environment and jumper are changing along with the sun.
How did you arrive at the web cam idea?
RF: There were these crude tests from 2006 (using Flash) where you wave your hand in front of a web-cam and a red dot on the screen follows the movements of your hand. It’s essentially the same technology used in video installations where insane programs like MAX/MSP Jitter are required, but here you could do it with a standard web-cam at your house. Knowing that all the new Mac laptops have a web cam built-in, we realized we could reach a decently wide audience. We wanted to take that technology and create something that would feel mystically beautiful and cinematic, where the technology that made it work was hidden and you would feel like you were using your body in some way to alter the environment and video.
And what about the mystic/neo-pagan aesthetic – what was that inspired by?
RF: The last few BMSR albums have been very colorful sounding and almost folky in a very electronic way, while this new album sounds a little colder and in my opinion, slightly dark. Visually we had/have also been moving into the darker side of Psychedelia, and for this video we really wanted to create something that would capture that. I think maybe its our reaction to the neon drenched imagery that’s very big right now in art and videos (which is undeniably cool of course), but it was good to put something out there that feels fantastical in a different way and has a darker more mystical undertone.
View Radical Friend’s REEL HERE
Trevor Cornish plays with fire, dust, and Visa
View Trevor’s VISA HERE
Trevor Cornish finishes his latest ad for VISA. (Hamsterpub / Saatchi & Saatchi PARIS)
Q: What was your first instinctive approach to a project of this magnitude/detail?
TC: Push it all the way. It was an idea that was so good and big on paper, but I’ve seen ideas like this fall flat before either because of client/agency hesitations, worry about reactions or just not wanting to commit to the full potential of the idea. We talked about that a lot during the pitch and thankfully the client was wonderful and really wanted this spot to be as big as we did.
Q: What did you foresee as possible problems/challenges and how did you overcome them?
TC: Money versus reality. Like all budgets these days, there were challenges to make this spot as big as we wanted it to be. We needed to destroy a large hardware/decor store, which is no small task, and and unfortunately Home Depot or Rona were not about to let us in and do this. So we had to build this place from nothing just so we could wreck it. We worked really hard with our production designer, Francois Jordaan, to design the set as big as we needed it to be while at the same time leaving room for flexibility and the ability to do quick clean ups. This took a lot of meetings and reworking the plan over and over again, but in the end we got everything we wanted.
Q: We’re there any key production hurdles throughout the shoot?
TC: Water and dust. These two elements made finding a location in which to build this set next to impossible. And we couldn’t just go in to a studio because we wanted to feel windows as well as the ceiling at some points. We found a few places that were willing to let us, but once we looked at structural issues we realized the building would leak and we’d destroy it. After exhausting every resource our locations manager finally found a place that met all our needs, but water from the sprinklers were still a constant issue. And once we mixed the dust in there it was just a big mud pit. It took a lot of work from all departments to deal with this nasty mixture and I’m sure they are still cleaning it off some of the equipment.
Q: What was the most fun moment for you during the shoot?
TC: Blowing stuff up is always the most fun and we had several opportunities to do that on this shoot. The timing and choreography is always so intense. You rehearse and rehearse, but in the end you’ve got one crack at it or a very, very long reset. The biggest one was after the bags of cement explode open and a big wall of dust basically fills the store, almost chasing the customers out. This cloud was going to cover the whole place and resetting was not really an option. We had two cameras, one placed directly in the line of fire and another on the dolly which we moved with the direction of the explosion to see it blast around the corner of the aisles as the customers went running. In the end it all worked great and we got it in one take, but just before calling action you could’ve cut the tension with a knife. Good fun.
View Trevor Cornish’s REEL HERE
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