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
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