MVWire: So it’s been a couple of years since you moved to DNA, how has the transition been for you?

Nzingha Stewart: I absolutely love everyone at DNA. Working there has been a growing process for me. When I was at Propaganda I was just surrounded by so many extraordinary and creative people, like Mark Romanek, Michel Gondry. I felt everything I did while I was there had to be super artsy and innovative. I’m very proud of the work I did there. Some of my favorite videos came while I was at Propaganda Films. But at that time I didn’t really understand that it wasn’t about one upping everyone. It’s mainly about being commissioned to help sell an artist, not to do things that are different just for the sake of being different. DNA has really driven that home for me, it’s more like a commercial rather than an art piece. It’s taken me a while to realize that I can make art and market the artist at the same time.

MVWire: It’s interesting to see the variety of artist you have directed.

NS: I still get excited about my work and the genres don’t limit me. And I think you can see if someone’s not interested in what they’re doing through the work. I’ve just been lucky in having worked with bands I’m a huge fan of.

MVWire: The Joss Stone video really looks great, how was it working with her?

NS: It was fantastic! Her being only 16 years old brought up teenage jitters and lots of insecurities like “Am I doing this right?” or “How am I going to look?” But as the day progressed she fell into stride and her confidence kicked in. She was so exciting once she fell into the music. And she was super nice, there were no high demands for things to be super flossy. She wanted the darkness and edgy feel, which was very exciting, and different from anything else you’d see on MTV from a teenage artist.

MVWire: Yeah, it was refreshing to see something new! The scenes were real raw, where did you shoot it?

NS: We shot for a day in Brooklyn, NY at a little club in Redhook.

MVWire: Were there any specifics you had in mind to shoot that day?

NS: I wanted a little bit of a retro feel, like an old Janis Joplin concert footage look with that style of stage lighting. And when we did the transfer we added a monochromatic effect with all yellow. The effect only made the final edit in two shots but just that, with all the back lighting gave me the look I wanted.

MVWire: You can see the influence of fashion photography, especially when you are shooting the female figure.

NS: I’ve always been attracted to fashion photography. I used to collect photos and at 14 years old I knew who all the big fashion photographers were. So I think that has something to do with it. And being a woman, I see myself in every single shot that I do. I ask myself if it were my music video what would I want people to see? Or if it’s a video for a guy, I ask what kind of woman would they want to be with. Then I try to bring that out.

MVWire: What was your approach with the Eve video?

NS: Mostly as a fan. Since she has been shown as a fashion diva in her prior work I wanted to show her on her day off. I wanted a sense of how she is just hanging out in her neighborhood and plays a basketball game, maybe goes to a party. And after all that, the next day she’s back out on the block. So I went for something more relaxed and didn’t have anything to do with “money.” Just a great vibe and no huge fashion pieces or cars. She has such unbelievable drive that she would do one more take to get it right. Most artists I’ve worked with (especially those with no staying power) would have just stayed in their trailer.

But it was still an incredibly hard job. I underestimated how famous she is. Without the two days to shoot we would have been killed, because when she came out of her trailer it was like the Beatles. The block was just packed, people were being crushed, and the police had to shut us down at one point. We were literally pressed from all sides. It was so crazy I wanted to leave. There were at least 1000 people on one corner, and we only had four security guards.

MVWire: Before you directed the Dashboard Confessional “Handsdown” video, were you a fan of their music?

NS: After that job I became a huge fan. I had never heard of them prior to that, but once I heard the music I just fell in love with them. They are the only group I have gone out and bought their album after I working on their video. No label freebees, I wanted to actually support the band.

MVWire: Could you tell us the process of how the video was made?

NS: They wanted something different and more performance driven. And I wanted to have the feeling that you were inside the music with lines and colors coming to life, which would enhance the music you were listening to. To build it like it was part of a memory, sort of like déja vu where you remember something for a second then you aren’t sure where it came from, but a certain place or smell triggered that particular memory. And you feel like you’ ve been there before.

I wanted flashes that would trigger those kinds of memories. He says things in the video that trigger this and things that give you a visual reaction to the song like, ” I will always remember the scent of your hair” or ” that time on the clock.” We created a lot of the graphics from those images. And I gave him references to the colors we were going to use. Other parts would feel like a 70′s laser show and other areas would seem like Fantasia and yet others would be like Jeremy Blake’s artwork in Punchdrunk Love. It’s a weird treatment so that’s why I gave him so many references. Exactly how does being inside the music look? [ Laughing ]

MVWire: The video has a unique graphic sense, how did you work with the post production facility?

NS: The facility we used was Brand New School and they were fantastic with it all. Throughout the editing process I would check in every now and then and give minor tweaks, but they were so off and running from the references they didn’t need much help. If anything I had to protect it from the record label because they don’t always understand what the video’s going to be so they might make changes too early based on not knowing enough. So I would run interference and say here’s what they’re going to do and please be patient with the process. We shot the band in green screen and did everything else in post. Then there was a tiny bit more where I just grabbed a camera and shot outside my Jetta while driving over the Staten Island Bridge. It was all streetlights and beach shots, like one I did was of a girl’s hair blowing.

NS: It helps when you have a great artist, it would’ve been so much harder if they couldn’t perform. But Chris is such a natural and he got it every single time. Without that I could have never done this video. Only the graphics would have stood out and the person would have looked horrible. So with only graphics and performance and no big story, you have to have great performers.

MVWire: Were there any specific reasons for the color combinations you chose?

NS: I wanted it to have a punk edge and to me punk is fuchsia and black like an old Blondie or the Clash poster, just that neon and black tone. Like Sex Pistol posters always have Sid and Johnny in black and white with colors all around them, so we did that with Dashboard where the band is never in color in the video.

MVWire: For up and coming directors, what suggestions do you have on how to pursue this career?

NS: Send the work or demo to every single production company or label you can think of, especially the labels that do the lower budget jobs. I would try as much as possible to get in at one of those places. Go to the shows of your favorite artists, take your reel with you or your card and promote yourself. Practice and get better, you never know who’s going to see your stuff or where it’ll take you. That’s kind of what happened to me, just shooting jobs for $1000 or $2000 and people finding out what I was doing, building a reel, then sending it out to reps and then eventually one of them signed me.

MVW: Did you know each other at Brown?

Molly: Yeah, we knew each other, but we didn’t hang out… It’s a pretty small school. But, we ended up deciding to do a video on scars and scar fetish, and did this little quirky film; half stop-motion, half live action at a park in Rhode Island. It involves raw pieces of meat, and trying to recreate a horror- kind of feeling. We had fun doing that and did a lot of little stuff on the side, little music videos that were all kind of specs- without the intension of them being specs, because we didn’t even really know what that meant. It was more for like, “Oh let’s do…here’s a really cool spark song- let’s buy 1200 peeps and do a little video.” So it was never done with the intention of us becoming music video directors.

Mariah: It was kind of a hobby that turned into something after college…

MVW: Could you take us through the process of how this latest video came about?

Mariah: Jen (@ Radical Media) gave us the track to write on, and we (wrote on) several SubPop tracks… they have some great bands, so we were really excited! They came to us with a band we really liked a lot (Sleater-Kinney) and they’ve been around forever. We got the track, sat down and listened to it a bunch of times- Molly found an article online about this new album, which is called “The Woods.” One of the women in the band had been talking about the Pacific Northwestern Woods, this place that puts in anxiety and fear, because there are always serial killers and grizzly bears and… the “unknown thing” in the woods. So we wrote our treatment with that in mind.

Molly: Also, when we listened to it we didn’t understand the lyrics at all, we just could not decipher them whatsoever, so it was kind of more just pulling a few words out. The treatment was pretty much based on the vibe of the song; like a feeling on the guitar and voice and the drum beat.

Mariah: Yeah, to me it sort of sounded like horror movie with people screaming. It was hard to decipher what she is saying, but it is definitely a pretty powerful song with feeling behind it.

MVW: Who was your director of photography?

Molly: Matt Uhry , who is, like, a genius. We first met Matt on the PETA job and really respected his kind of intuition and work.

MVW: What were the challenges unique to shooting this performance?

Molly: It was definitely really stressful when we were up there, because as you know, Portland is known for just rain all the time. So, we were pretty much under the assumption that we were going to be shooting in a shack or in a school or something like that… We were really lucky, and I don’t know how it worked out like it did, but the weather was just beautiful the whole time we were up there.

Mariah: Yeah, there were a lot of factors working against us, but we lucked out on a lot of them: It was a small budget video, and it was supposed to rain.. But it didn’t rain a single day that we were up there. We had way less film than we had hoped, but pretty much every foot of it was usable and that was the main thing. The band was amazing; they only had to practice like once or twice, and they just got right into it.

Molly: Every single person in Portland was so incredibly supportive, like the guy that lent us his truck; we found him on Craig’s List, and he wanted to drive it at 3 in the morning to the location (which was 2 hours away). The only compensation he wanted was his picture with the band. It is an understatement to say that they were supportive. Everyone just helped out for nothing.

Mariah: There was a pizza delivery guy in Portland that went around looking for pine cones that were used in some of the still images. They just found people and friends of friends that really helped out and were really excited about it.

MVW: What was the editing process like?

Molly: We basically hired a friend, Rob Auten from Sunset editorial to edit the video, and he kind of is one of those quirky guys that listens to the song a couple of times and just clicks with the music and the visuals simultaneously. It wasn’t like one and then the other; he just listened to it and got it right away. He’s really, really great.

MVW: It’s a great looking performance!

Molly: Matt Uhry our DP captured something that I think was pretty unexplainable, like the lens flairs, Carrie’s breath coming out of the woods or Janet’s… I mean, there are all these little interesting moments that could have very easily gone unaccounted for, but he was just so helpful. We just compliment each other just really well.

MVW: There was definitely something there just the whole scene of the band playing in the woods and just the feel and look, it really added a new dimension to the video.

Mariah: We definitely did a lot of research when we were coming up with our shot list. We watched like every horror movie between 1970 and 1980 and like every episode of Twin Peaks so there are a lot more of subtle references or inspiration from those kind of movies.

MVW: So you’ve got some stop motion at the very beginning of it and the sets… did you develop all the sets yourselves?

Mariah: We had an art director: Dani Tull . He worked with us on the PETA spot as well. But we shot all the animation and everything on our own. We developed the idea for the set with Danny, like the location of it and everything. He built the little village and all props and stuff.

MVW: What do you enjoy about shooting stop motion?

Mariah: I mean for me it’s sort of an instant gratification just watching inanimate objects suddenly move around so it’s kind of like a simple pleasure.

Molly: And for me, we can just work by ourselves and no one else has to be there, so we completely have control over everything. You can get a Miller Highlife and the music and just kind of like
zone out.

MVW: How was the transition from doing your own projects to learning about production, has this been an easy transition for you?

Mariah: The Instruction video pretty much broke us in…

Molly: In a hard way

Mariah: I remember thinking, “This is so amazing doing this” during the shoot. It’s sort of like being blown away by being a bona fide director with a monitor and a crew. There is a lot of stuff I feel like we learned from that video. I think that initially I was so blown away by learning and just by the whole process of it.

Molly: Radical signed us with the intention of developing us. Jen (their rep) and Dave Meyers would be on set first thing in the morning and was there to ask, “Do you feel good, does this make sense the way that it looks?” Just raising questions, not like telling, but more like teaching us as we went along without making us claustrophobic. They gave us time to do what we wanted, but also they were there to really give us good advice. It was one of those things that was completely gratifying.

MVW: What was the inspiration behind the “Breakdown” music video?

Molly: That was inspired by George Melies. He did something like moving posters, on the wall that came to life. We put each band member in one of these poster like cubicles. It was funny because each cubicle fit the personality of each band member unconsciously, but it was pretty much inspired by that.

Mariah: A lot of people think it’s a split screen, but Danny built that set and there were two levels with 5 different compartments.

MVW: What was the editing process on this say verses the Entertain video?

Mariah: This one was a lot harder to tackle. We had a lot of different elements, and we were trying to edit it ourselves initially, which was kind of a disaster, but we wound up hiring an editor named Miguel Aguilar (The New York Office) and he just totally pulled it together for us.

MVW: How did you work with him?

Molly: He read the treatment four times and then did his thing. The stop motion is so formulaic and mathematical, whereas this was really hard to tell a story, with the tons of footage that was shot on DV. One thing that we learned pretty quickly was that the treatment has to reflect the video and visa versa. There were a couple of elements that we had missed, and we had to go back and replace it with the animation.

Mariah: With that being said, Radical was totally 100% keeping us above water. They never let us step outside the lines.

Sleater-Kinney “Entertain”

Credits:

Producer: Gina Bevilacqua
DP: Matt Uhry
Colorist: Beau Leon/Syndicate
Editor: Rob Auten

Instruction “Breakdown”

Credits:

Producer: Chris Kraft
Prod. Designer: Dani Tull
DP: Dave Rudd
Colorist: Beau Leon/Syndicate
Editor: Miguel Aguilar

Interview with director Lex Halaby…

Music Video Wire: Did you have the concept of the tornado from the start?

Lex Halaby: When I received Mudvayne’s track for “Happy?” they already expressed interest in making a tornado video. Everything from their website to their album art was incorporating the themes of violent weather, so it was a natural fit from the very beginning. The harder part was creating a way in which to make the storm build over the course of the video. If we jumped into a tornado in the first chorus it would lose its effect by the second; so the real challenge was finding storm elements we could use to create anticipation of the much larger tornado sequence at the end.

MVW: What did you have to look for when shooting the performance with post effects in mind?

LH: There was a balancing act throughout the filming process to ensure that we had the necessary effects elements to build the tornado quickly and incorporate it within a fairly fast video edit. I worked with storyboard artist Paul Leri to create boards that would communicate the overall tone and progression of the storm sequence. This helped get everyone on the same page as to when and how we see the storm begin to brew. Also, my cinematographer, Martin Ahlgren, and I had extensive discussions about the best way to approach shooting a storm video in the middle of a bright and sunny field in the California High Desert.

The first effects challenge was tackling the over 100 sky replacement shots. Because there wasn’t a cloud in the sky the day of our actual shoot, from day one we planned on creating separate sky elements. In telecine we did separate passes for the band performance and for the sky, to make it easier to pull mattes. Obviously, when hundreds of flowers are crossing the camera in the foreground using every tool available to expedite the process is key.

The second phase was placing motion markers around the band space to help with camera tracking. We arranged twenty-five to thirty markers in a semi-circle around the band to ensure that there would at least two or three markers in every shot from every angle. I knew from very early on that I wanted to keep the performance organic and stay away from a locked off and rigid shot structure. The best solution to that problem was to create a performance environment that would have all the necessary elements to pull from in post-production.

Lastly we shot lots of debris elements such as leaves, grass, and dust against red screen to layer and composite into the final tornado sequence and give it a sense of realism and chaos.

MVW: Describe your post-production process with the video. What challenges did you face?

LH: One of the biggest challenges was the sheer number of shots and the very short post-production schedule. In order to keep up the intensity of the video, Nicholas Wayman-Harris (filmcore) and I decided to keep the edit a little faster than your average effects video. With almost 150 total effects shots the task was very daunting. The original company we contracted to take on the effects work ending up being completely incapable of delivering the quality of effects that were needed and within our tight schedule. Half way through our post schedule we made the decision to pull all our elements from their company and hire two new teams to take on the remainder of the work. It was a difficult decision but one that was absolutely necessary to get the project completed. The decision turned out to be the right one, because the new companies, Origami Digital and Diesel fx, were able to do in three days what the original company couldn’t do in three weeks. I can’t say enough good things about Oliver Hotz and Elliott Jobe; they really came through in the clutch and we worked many long nights to complete the video.

LH: What is the story behind the butterfly?

The concept of the butterfly came from The Butterfly Effect Chaos Theory. The theory pretty much states that a butterfly flapping its wings in Japan can cause a tornado in Texas. Basically the idea is that a small and random occurrence can affect larger and larger phenomena. It is not meant to be overtly displayed in the video, but I felt it would create an interesting subtext. Some people have picked up on it and others have not, but it as a catalyst to the weather building, as if forewarning of the impending storm.

MVW: The yellow and green colors in the field really stood out. Who was your colorist?

LH: Bob Curreri and the team at The Syndicate did the final coloring on the video. Besides the butterfly serving as an underlying theme I wanted the video to be bright and colorful, something we rarely see with harder rock bands. Because the color of the video changes as the storm rolls in, we created two different looks that transitioned well together. The combination of the butterfly and the field really helped create an otherworldly environment for Mudvayne to perform within.

MVW: What are your thoughts about the video now that it has been completed?

LH: Well I really want to thank Cathy Pellow and Barbara Benson for all their support and hardwork in making this video a success. Also, I am excited for Mudvayne and video because the song has really struck it big at radio and has remained one of the top active rock radio songs in the country for quite some time. Knowing the challenges we faced when taking on a heavy effects video, it’s great to see it get out there and get played.

Credits

Production Co: Refused TV
Executive Producer: Cathy Pellow
Producer: Barbara Benson
Director: Lex Halaby
DP: Martin Ahlgren
Editor: Nicholas Wayman-Harris / Filmcore
Telecine: Bob Curreri / The Syndicate
Visual Effects: Origami Digital and Diesel FX
Label: Epic Records
Commissioner: Piero Giramonti

Links of Interest:
Mudvayne
Lex Halaby
RefusedTV

*See the Joss Stone “Spoiled” Music Video @
http://josephkahn.com

MVW: It was a great artist and a great song to work with not to mention that she is very attractive. Can you tell me from hearing that song how you developed the concept when you listened to it through writing the treatment for it?

Joseph Kahn: I knew that Joss wanted to push the boundaries a bit and was not afraid to go in new places. I’ve been sort of playing around with 5 dimension editing. It’s just a little thing that I’ve been thinking about lately. I decided to make a video about the story that felt completely real and then place it within a framework where it became a metaphor. I wanted it to be so gritty like real that by the time I started doing all of my effects and stuff like that, you had this sort of emotional context that was grounded. That’s the reason I shot this video documentary style in the beginning. What happens in the video is that they have an argument, she runs out to the car and they drive away. Then they essentially get into a car crash and the whole thing loops and they go back to the diner. Basically the video is one giant loop giving the impression that the whole thing is going to start over again like one of those relationships that don’t end. It’s a visual metaphor, one of those things you can’t get out off or having the same argument over and over again.

MVW: It was an interesting twist to see a fatal car crash without anyone getting hurt. I am really interested to hear more about the 5 dimensional editing!

JK: To be honest with you, it’s something I’ve been keeping to myself and I haven’t really explained in detail but the basic premise is that it’s like an etcher that does paintings making solutions that can’t fit into our normal world. Like if you have a staircase that loops into itself then folds. You don’t know where the fold happens because you can’t calculate it in your head and it doesn’t make sense in terms of how you perceive its space. Similarly, in Blink182 there are a lot of solutions happening within that video. If you took it on a linier level the whole video theoretically happened in one shot.

MVW: Where was all this shot?

JK: It was shot in New York, the beginning of January. Two days run, one day on sound stage and one day Up State during some of the coldest weather possible!

MVW: As far as the actual car crash itself, how were you able to create the impact?

JK: It’s mostly created in CG. It’s an interesting process because I started with a company that was royally screwed up and just did not know what they were doing then I brought it over to Kroma. Literally within a couple of days they did something that was so completely radical to fix the video it was like 3-4 days worth of work compared to the other guys that was like 3 weeks.

MVW: Is this the first time you’ve worked with Joss Stone? What was she like to work with?

JK: Yes, this was my first video with Joss Stone. Joss is like every other beautiful girl I’ve ever worked with and I think I’ve worked with the best in the world. They don’t know they are beautiful which is really odd, but the most beautiful women in the world do not understand how pretty they are and it’s a tricky thing trying to get women to look beautiful on film too because they can’t be self-conscious. Self-conscious translates as awkward on film so you have to develop their confidence and as the director you have to let them realize they are beautiful so that they are free to be themselves. During the video shoot Joss had gotten a black eye because she had an accident with her Blackberry or something. I could only shoot from a certain angle for the first day and had to actually add another day of shooting, it was only suppose to be two days but that black eye kind of screwed things up. It was a very tricky video to accomplish because as much as I wanted to do my interesting concepts and sell the emotions to the song it was also selling videos on marketing and if your artist doesn’t look good you are kind of screwing it up.

MVW: What was your directing style with her?

JK: I’ve been trying to upgrade my level of actors directing. I tried all the things I’ve been reading in the 50 different books I’ve been checking out lately. I was trying to treat it like a real movie and have her play a character and motivate her through actual reasons as opposed to telling her to be sad here.

MVW: It’s nice to have such a great song and a great artist to be able to make the video that you envision.

JK: Yes, it’s a tricky thing because the song is amazing it’s not on a contemporary level, it’s a very old fashion song. One of the things I sort of thought of was that if I’m going to sell this and when I mean sell I don’t mean “make you pay for it or anything” I’m talking about like making “myself” as an average viewer believe in it’s relevancy of this type of sound and this type of message to my life. I decided I had to take a far left field, I can’t make one of those typical love song videos, and it has to attack you from a different perspective. Makes you look at both the song and the meanings from different perspectives, it has to feel fresh in that way, that’s why I choose such an orthodox approach to the video. I think when you combine a really orthodox video with kind of an old fashion song it comes out to be something worth the sum of its parts.

MVW: Well it definitely comes across, other than car crash it’s “seems” to be a pretty straightforward video. I think the general public is unappreciative a lot of times of what you do because it looks so simple.

JK: Yeah. That’s the danger of what I do. I tend to make videos that never really bring attention to myself. My job is to bury myself in the music and the artist and ultimately if you walk away liking that song and that artist then I’ve done my job. If the overall product has a certain simplicity to it that makes you miss all the little things that I’ve done and it makes my job look invisible… and I’ve done my job quite frankly. I think you shouldn’t be noticing me, you should be noticing Joss.

I think that the thing you have to keep in mind when you look at the Joss Stone video is it looks straight forward but really if you break it down it’s actually quite complex because it’s a time loop. The angles are done very specifically, very simply something that has kind of a geometric feel to it, the opening should almost have like a blasé feel to the film making. That was definitely done on purpose like a “matter of fact ness” about it and if you notice I didn’t do any like crazy 360 degree virtual camera moves or anything like that. It’s just all a type of “matter of fact” happening before you eyes.

If you watch the video from the beginning, in the first verse there is no close up on Joss, her close up doesn’t happen until the second verse. In every record edit they’ll always go “let’s start with the close up”. If you look at it everything is done in a wide far shot, in fact, not only is it done in a wide far shot it’s shot through a window through multi panes of glass and foreground elements so we are looking from the inside to the outside through a window and that’s how the entire first verse is done. That kind of stuff drives record companies batty, it’s the type of stuff that most music video viewers don’t see as a risky thing to do.

MVW: Not that long ago you use to direct, shoot and edit your own work. How did that evolve with just directing now?

JK: I wanted to spend more time with the artist and client relationships because when I was directing, editing and DP ing I just didn’t have time. I still do those things to a certain degree although I filter it through my partners. Now I try to let the DP take care of the lighting, the editor do the first pass and a lot of the client re-edits so I don’t have to go nuts beating my head against the wall every time someone wants to change something. Overall it gives me the proper amount of distance so that I can get perspective and become a nicer human being.

Credits:

Director: Joseph Kahn
Producer: Maryann Tanedo
Cinematography: Brad Rushing
Editor: David Blackburn
Visual FX: Kroma

The Motion Theory directing team explain how they used a mixture of animation and live action footage for Velvet Revolver’s new music video for “Dirty Little Thing” from the RCA release Contraband .

MVW: Could you describe the pre-production of the video from writing the treatment and being awarded the video?

Motion Theory: It started off with an idea that Velvet Revolver had seen on an album cover by Rockin’ Jellybean (the illustrator). He had already created a few of the designs for their tour and drum kit. The band had just come back from a world tour and asked a number of people for their take on an idea that they had for Sucker Train Blues and a train in the Rockin’ Jellybean style. We really liked the world of Rockin’ Jellybean, which has a very playful sexuality and the feel of underground rock posters from the 70’s. We wanted to integrate animation and live action styles as close as possible to his style. We sold the band on the concept of a hybrid train that is half steam engine and half muscle car using mock-ups of what the train would look like in an extensive presentation of how we saw this world and the whole concept coming together, which is big testosterone rock n roll and just really having fun with it!

MVW: How did you create the train set up?

MT: There is a town called Fillmore (an hour outside of L.A.) with a working train yard. We took a gutted train car and completely built the whole shot from scratch, which was really important for the sense of light and movement. It was an art direction challenge to make it feel very rock n roll but at the same time have a bit of a Wild Wild West burlesque feel to it. Another challenge with shooting inside the train was the width that made it difficult to set up a performance space. We also set the entire train on hydraulics so that while we were shooting it was rocking back and forth which enhanced the technical difficulty of the shoot.

MVW: In such tight quarters, was it difficult for the band to perform?

MT: They just give you gems moment after moment. For instance, Scott (Weiland) would take off his jacket at a very specific point in the song in every take making sure we would have continuity. It was just gold every single time and that really helped out in taking advantage of such a small space. We were very worried because the train was only nine feet across but they managed to make it work.

MVW: How did you go about choreographing in the small space? Did you have specific ideas in mind or did you just let it go to see what happened?

MT: Our creative focus was answering the question, What can we do in here in spite of the limitations? On different takes we went for different shots, for example getting all the people in the train car so we could see all the women or the crowd interacting with the band. Sometimes we’d have to move the crowd over a little bit to get them out of the way so the Steadicam guy could shoot the scene. We also went for the widest possible shot with the amazing light that our dp Claudio Miranda created.

MVW: How did you work on the animation with Jellybean?

MT: Jellybean was more of an illustrator. We had meetings with him where we would talk about style, the look, and the sort of things that we wanted him to draw.

In a tight schedule like this we had to be clear from the beginning exactly what was going to be accomplished in the animation process. With almost a minute and a half of animation inside of about a month there was no time to have the story board and conception phase. We created a 3-D pre-vid of all the movement outside of the train, the characters so there was a clear vision of what had to captured going into the shoot.

While we were editing we continued to revise the sequences in the computer and worked with Jelly to help illustrate some of the look and feel we wanted. Everything was animated in 3-D including the train, background and environment. Then it was given to Chris Prynoski our 2-D animator. Chris and his team were just incredible in getting the 2-D animation done in time. The number of frames they managed to kick out in that amount of time was superhuman. On our site here at Motion Theory we work as a team and have an extensive amount of internal resources. At one point we there were a total of fifteen 3-D and 2-D animators developing the video.

MVW: What were the steps involved in creating the animation?

MT: There were multiple steps, the first step was animating a scene in 3-D. We would create the train, the movement of the train, camera move, train moving through the environment, then animate some of the characters in a rougher form. He would take the train and the girl on the train, for example, and would draw over what we animated and add really cool details to make it feel like it was an underground comic book.

MVW: What was the editing process in making the animation and the live action work together?

MT: Once we had shot the material we edited it with David Blackburn at King-cut. We brought him animated sequences to fill the spaces in the video where the animation should go. As every day of editing went by there would be more 3-D and pre-vid shots of what the animation was going to look like so each day we got closer and closer to what the story was going to be. We probably created about five minutes of animation and out of that five minutes of really rough animation a minute and a half would sort of stick. He works just about a mile away and we were over there all the time. It started to look like we were a part of the staff!

MVW: So you worked closely together on the edit rather that just saying, okay, here it is.

MT: Especially with a job like this where everything is so integrated we had to be there and think through all the parts of the process. The real challenge was making it feel so integrated that there isn’t any change in terms of feeling or mood as you move from one thing to the other.

MVW: How did you incorporate what you shot on film versus the animation during the telecine process?

MT: Clark Mueller from Riot Colors telecined the footage and during the process we compared it to our favorite Rockin’ Jellybean illustrations. There were particular images that really captured the essence of what we wanted for the video so we actively tried to make the telecine match those illustrations. So once we had the footage telecined and we were editing we knew the direction that we wanted to take the animation as well. All the live action stemmed from the look of the illustrations.

For more information visit -
Velvet Revolver

CREDITS

Record Label: RCA Records
Artist: Velvet Revolver
Music Video Commissioner: Lorin Finkelstein

Production Company: Motion Theory
Director: Motion Theory
Director of Photography: Claudio Miranda
Executive Producer: Javier Jimenez
Producers: Laura Heflin, Scott Gemmell
Production Designer: Julie Berghoff
Hair/Make-Up: Anny Kim
Wardrobe Stylist: Carol Beadle

Editorial Company: King Cut
Editor: David Blackburn
Telecine: Riot Colors
Colorist: Clark Mueller

Design/Compositing Company: Motion Theory
Creative Director: Mathew Cullen, Grady Hall
Visual Effects Supervisor: John Clark, Linas Jodwalis
Designers/Animators: Mathew Cullen, Kaan Atilla, Tom Bruno, Earl Burnley, Don Campbell, John Clark, Jesus de Francisco, Jesse Franklin, Juston Hsu, Christopher Janney, Linas Jodwalis, Mark Kudsi, Mark Lai, Chris Leone, Vi Nguyen, Irene Park, Robyn Resella, Kirk Shintani, Mike Slane, Shihlin Wu
Pre-Visualization Development: Chris Leone
Post Production Coordinator: James Taylor

Illustrator Company: Rockin’ Jellybean Graphics
Illustrator: Jellybean

Animation: Motion Theory/Kachew
Art Director: Mathew Cullen, Chris Prynoski
Producer: David Busch

Wendell: Paul Stewart, the CEO of Next Thing Records, was working with various hip hop artists and was looking for someone to film a behind-the-scenes on the road DVD project. After I shot the PSA for Chris Robinson, his assistant, Risa Machuca recommended me to Paul. We hooked up and but that project didn¹t work out. But then Paul told me about a project he was putting out on his own record label for Adriana Evans. I listened to the first single “Remember the Love” and he set up a meeting with Adriana and [producer] John Scott and we hit it off really well. She asked me to write a treatment for “Remember the Love” and then when I met with them again, they said how much they really liked it, but they were getting a great reaction from the street on another song and wanted me to write a treatment for “7 Days.”

Before writing the treatment I asked to see Adriana’s other music videos. The first was “Seein’ Is Believin’ directed by one of my heroes, Paul Hunter. And the second “Love is All Around” was directed by Julie Dash ( Tracy Chapman’s “Give Me One Reason to Stay Here’) Well how do you try and follow after that kind of talent? So I decided to showcase the Adriana Evans that up until now had not been seen in her music videos by visually supporting the elements you hear in the song: rock edge fused with Afro Cuban percussion and culture.

During the pre-production, my DP Johnny Ching and I did location scouts all around the city. But since L.A. has been filmed so much we realized a lot of the locations we were coming up with had already seen in other videos. And with this being Hollywood, some locations wanted more money than our meager budget would allow. We managed to find the right locations to keep it “street” and yet still allow her natural beauty to shine through.

MVW: The bedroom scenes look great.

W: The bedroom scenes were really crucial to making the entire video work, because this is a song is about passion. Therefore we really needed to create a realistic and intimate setting for Adriana to perform so the audience would truly believe that they’re seeing a woman who’s been away from her man for seven days! Arika Jacobs, served as our art director. She was recommended to by Lex Halaby, and she did an excellent job of transforming that barren loft apartment above a record distributor’s warehouse into a sanctuary of beauty and sensuality. She and her team came through in a major way. And then Adriana just took it to whole other level with her performance!

MVW: How was it working with Johnny as far as accomplishing the look in the video?

W: He’s great! Johnny’s an excellent DP. He‘s technically proficient and he combines those skill with the soul of an artist. I like to refer to him as my “twin” (laughing) At first I was tempted to DP this video as well as direct. But I remembered Hype Williams saying that working with a cinematographer is like having “two directors, like having two brains”. And of course, he was right. So I decided to bring Johnny on board as DP which allowed me to be able to see the whole picture and concentrate most of my attention on Adriana and getting the best performance from her and the other actors. We shot a lot of digital stills of the locations in pre-production and Johnny and I did lot of instant messaging back and forth discussing movies, video and ideas. It really helped being cinematographers and speaking the same language.

I also think Johnny did a really great job of creating the right moods with his lighting. 1st AC Alexander Yellen and 2nd AC Justin Weiss were top notch pros. And Johnny’s gaffer, Alexander Brown was fast, thorough and efficient in executing the lighting plan.

MVW: The different looks worked well and added variety to the video because it wasn’t just the same old thing.

W: Thank you. We really wanted to transport the viewer to a different place and the different wardrobe changes and varied environments helped to create and sustain the atmosphere so that at times you would actually feel like you were with her in Cuba. I spent a lot of time doing research while in pre-production and then going over the looks and the locations we used were a big help, too. I have to give a great deal of credit to Adriana, for the education on her culture and for keeping me honest.

MVW: Did anything come up that wasn’t originally planned for the video but was just something that incorporated into the video while you were shooting?

W: No, if anything it was a case of having to eliminate shots I had planned. What you see in the video was what I wrote in the treatment so outside of a few shots of palm trees in silhouettes there’s wasn’t a great deal of “oh, this is a good shot, let’s just grab it” kind of stuff. We did spend part of another day traveling the city taking stills of murals, the inside of a Cuban restaurant, and photographing drums and percussion instruments in a local African drum shop. And while those shots were tight, I ultimately decided against using any of it in the video

By the way, during the introduction of the video when Adriana is walking in slow motion in the tunnel, you’ll notice that the lights are flickering. Now usually when you use film under fluorescent lights you have to shoot it at a specified frame rate so the lights won’t flicker. But since I wanted the introduction to feel ominous and work with the music, the pulsing flicker of the lights seemed like a good idea to help add to that feeling. It would be cool if you would mention that so people won’t think that we didn’t know what we were doing (laughing). It was intentional as was the greenish tint we added to the lights during telecine.

MVW: Do you want to talk a little bit about the wardrobe and makeup?

W: I learned one thing from working with Daniel Pearl and Malik Hassan Sayeed, that although you might want to film a female artist in a gritty urban setting, no matter what, you can’t have her looking that way. You have to go all out to make sure she looks beautiful! And in support of that you need to have top notch professionals working as your “Glam Squad.” I was happy to have Sarah Benjamin on board as our make-up artist. As you can see when you watch the video, she did a flawless job. Terrell Mullins was our Stylist and I was very pleased with the high level of enthusiasm he showed when we outlined our plan have Afro-Cuban culture reflected in the hairstyles and wardrobe. Together they did an amazing job.

MVW: How many days was the shoot?

W: We shot two full days and then Brett Juskalian, the 2nd unit DP, and I shot one additional night. Bret shot the scenes you see of overlooking the city, and the traffic the sped-up stuff. Like Johnny, Brett a DP to watch. My heroes on this shoot were Jonathan Scott and our PA Charlie Chesire, they really came through when the chips were down.

MVW: What format did you shoot the video on?

W: We shot this video in 35mm, framed for an aspect ratio of 1.85.1,; a full set of Zeiss Standard primes from Otto Nemenz. Thanks to a generous donation from Curt Cressman at Kodak, we were able to shoot our day exteriors using the Kodak EXR 5248, 100 ASA film stock. We shot the night exteriors and interiors using shorts ends of the 5279 Vision 500T and EXR 5298

MVW: How did you like working with Dave Hussey on the coloring of “7 Days”?

W: I love working with Dave and I held out to work with him because he’s such an amazing colorist. Unfortunately, December was his busiest month ever. He had just done the Jennifer Lopez video, the John Cougar Mellencamp video, a project for Dave La Chappelle and he was doing his first feature Digital Intermediate for Francis Lawrence’s film “Constantine” so he was swamped.

But somehow he managed to work us into his schedule and I have to give respect to his producer and scheduler Denise Brown for all her assistance. What really helped our cause was being prepared. After we shot the video Johnny and I got together at his place and worked in Photoshop to set up the looks we wanted. Then he posted the reference stills onto his web site. So when were able to get into telecine suite with Dave all he had to do was pull up the reference stills on his computer and match the look. And then we could move on and make other adjustments.

Dave did an incredible job of coloring this video and I always learn something new from working with him and he’s always very positive and encouraging. And I think he really appreciated that we came in prepared and knowing the looks we wanted. This approach definitely saves you time and money but you’d be surprised how people come into telecine without a clue and just try to wing it.

MVW: What about the black and white scene?

W: Oh, the scene when Adriana is standing with the older Cuban lady sitting in the chair? Yeah I love that shot, it’s my homage to photographer Gordon Parks. It was inspired by a photo I saw in a fashion magazine. The photo shoot had taken place in Cuba and I just loved the composition. I showed it to Adriana and she really was into it. The original photo was in color, but I decided to make it look like an old sepia tinted photo that you might find in someone’s family photo album. I had Logan add that flash bulb effect to help evoke an old school feel.

MVW: Logan Hefflefinger edited the video for you?

W: Yes. Logan works as an assistant editor on dozens of spots and music videos with Editor Livio Sanchez at Whitehouse Post; including several videos for Director Chris Milk, but “7 Days” was his first music video as an editor. I want to make sure that people know that this video came together because of relationships formed from reading interviews just like this one on MVWire. Chris [Milk] had said in an MVWire interview that Logan was going to be the next great editor.” So when I read that I decided to give him a call see if he’d be down for working with me and as things turned out he was really excited to get involved. So MV Wire is the reason why we hooked up and I can’t wait to get hired to direct another video so we can work together again. I also have to give credit to Michael Vaglienty at Giant Steps who did the online edit in Flame. He’s another solid professional.

MVW: I need to go back and review some of our own content!

WG: (laughs) Definitely! MVWire is a great resource for learning and sharing information with people who love music videos. Nearly every person involved on “7 Days” was a result of networking with people here on MVWire. So I have to stop and say “big up” to you Will for helping make that possible.

MVW: I appreciate that. So what’s next?

WG: Last week I had two very positive meetings with video commissioners at two of the major record labels which hopefully will lead to being able to direct videos for their artists. I’m reaching out to meet with other video commissioners and labels to let them see what I have to offer. In the meantime I’ll continue working hard every day and learning all I can so as to get better at my craft.

Credits:

Director: Wendell Scot Greene*
DP: Johnny W. Ching
Art Director: Arika Jacobs
Stylist: Terrell Mullins
Make-up: Sarah Benjamin
Flame Artist: Michael Vaglienty- Giant Steps, Los Angeles, CA
Colorist: Dave Hussey -Company 3, Santa Monica, CA
Editor: Logan Hefflefinger -Whitehouse Post, Santa Monica, CA
2nd Unit DP: Brett Juskalian
Executive Producers: Adriana Madera Evans, Jonathan Scott, Paul Stewart
Label: Next Thing Records

* Wendell Scot Greene can be contacted at
wsgreene@hotmail.com

MVW: What is the story behind the production of the “Dead Wrong” music video?

Robert Schober: I had already done a video for Michael Johnson, who’s a friend, and his band Holopaw. I was looking for another band to work with for my reel and he told me about his absolute favorite band on Sub Pop Records called Frausdots. I could easily check them out because they live in L.A. So I got a hold of some singles and was really, really into them. They were doing a series of free shows at Spaceland in Silver Lake so I went to see them to see if they’d be interested in doing a free video. They seemed interested so I gave them my reel but I didn’t hear from them that week so I went to another show. They just hadn’t had time to look at it but were still interested. They saw it a couple of days later and were really excited.

Brent Rademaker and Michelle Loiselle, who are the main part of the band, and I started looking at a lot of fashion books and at photo shoots they’d done and looked at old New Wave record album covers that they like. They showed me a picture of a Roy Lichtenstein painting and talked about how about they wanted to see people put into an environment like that but make it look different than stuff they’d already seen. We decided to do it with a green screen. Leigh Watson at Revolver got me in touch with a DP named Bobby Era. He’s directed a few videos that I’ve seen and I really like his work. He had a DVX to shoot it with and Revolver got us a green screen and some interns come help assist in gaffing and gripping. I couldn’t track down a studio space that was going to fit into my tiny budget so my girlfriend helped us out with place to shoot. She works at a big medical complex in Culver City that her boss owns. They demolished the third floor, which is a massive space that looks like a studio and gave us permission to use that after hours. We set up the green screen and shot it all within four hours basically from 8:00 to midnight. That was all the time we had to get as many shots as possible.

MVW: The washed out black and white look really works well with the effects and gives the video that 80’s look that you were talking about.

RS: Yeah, it’s like looking at a Joy Division album cover or old black and white photos of Ian Curtis or somebody like that. Most fashion photography is done in black and white. Lots of these albums were independently distributed and produced so they used a lot of black and white photography and four-color graphics on those record covers.

It was a conscious decision to go black and white for that look but I also knew that shooting digital green screen the edges were going to be rough and weird things would go on with the colors on the edges no matter what we did with it. Everything is pulled in shake. I got the absolute best pulls I could get for it being DV. All that stuff is less noticeable when you go to black and white and it helps the contrast.

It worked out for the best because of the limitation of how I was shooting my green screen and also using that aesthetic it would make the most sense to shoot it that way.

MVW: I had not heard the band before but it’s a good song and the visuals are a great fit.

RS: Brent has played in a lot of bands, like Beachwood Sparks, which is kind of a psychedelic band that’s been on Sub Pop for a number of years. In the 90’s, he was in a shoe gazer grunge type project with his brother called Further. This is the first project where he is in charge. It’s a record that he has wanted to do for years.

MVW: How did the editing process work?

RS: It became a two step process because I synced all of my shots together, making sure that everything was the exact length of the song. Then I threw them into a time line in After Effects and rendered out the frames I wanted then went back and timed the effects to the music. The first few cuts of the video were based on maybe four or five shots. It was too slow and hard to watch but I wanted to get the aesthetic nailed in place first and then go in and get things going with the music. So it was kind of a backward process of filling in frames until it looked right.

MVW: There could be endless versions of this video.

RS: That was kind of the idea, I guess, to fill in different locations or themes, then try out several of them and render a low resolution draft of it then flip through and see which one I liked the best. Since there wasn’t any narrative and it wasn’t very closely story boarded, it was kind of a process of just seeing it all fit together as it was being done.

Credits:
Label- Subpop
Producer- Leigh Watson (Revolver)
Director, Editor, Graphics- Robert Schober
DP- Bobby Eras (New York office)
Location Manager- Maeve Sullivan
Edit Assist - Gene Strocco (GS3 productions)
Hair/Make Up - Vanessa Price

Alexandre Moors, creative director on Scent of a Robot:

MVW: Alexandre, could you talk about working with the animation team? How did you incorporate the robot with the live action?

Alexandre Moors: I think one thing that helped was that we started shooting at least a month before we started modeling anything so in that way we were about to actually model a 3-D base on the location we found to do the shooting that made things much easier we had some 3-D animators that were actually on the set taking measurements of the space and so some of the spaces we were totally rebuilding in 3-D and the same thing for the color pallet it definitely helped to do it that way. The challenge was we kind of defined the style as we were working. We had some pretty clear views that we didn’t want to like a cartoon in 3-D and I think that came across pretty well. Even though a challenge was to integrate the cartoon look with the live action footage.

MVW: There were a couple of scenes, one for example was the one where he (Pete) goes into the kitchen and his little girl is sitting on the table and the girl turns into a robot. I thought the transition was amazing.

AM: Yes, that is a good example of how we recreated the whole kitchen in 3-D and also when I was trying to do the video, I didn’t want the look to go too crazy even though it’s jittering and junk everywhere, I was trying to keep it with flat colors as much as possible. Red and white make the transition possible even when moving from the robot character to the live action one; even though they don’t look alike they have the same color pallet so your eyes don’t jump from one to the other and you can assimilate one into the other… so that worked pretty well. Also for the robot, I was trying to render this kind of pixilated vision that a robot might have. Like at first, in the first 5 frames in each live action sequence it’s like highly pixilated and then it gets refined and gets the video look.

That also helps because if it were just like cutting from one to the other it would have been too much of a change. You first see the image, like, defined with 5-6 big squares of colors and then the definitions pick up making the transitions possible.

MVW: Have worked with live footage and animation before?

AM: I always mix the medium in my previous work so I’ve always worked with the blue screen or incorporating the cartoons based on live action footage and treated and drawn those. And also that’s probably 50% of our work since Ryan and I are both on UVPhactory we have really pushed the company to live action and special effects sales so that’s what we’ve been doing all year: shooting people or things on blue screen and then putting them in a street environment or visa-versa. So I guess these days it looks like it’s our expertise.

MVW: Could you talk about the production of the video?

AM: We had a lot of prep before we could start production, schedules, and things like that and that went on all summer but once the robot was designed, the whole office jumped into it and I was really impressed how much and how quickly we produced it. For me it was not so particular, I’m the crazy director but I’m experienced in doing live action and directing things for the company these days. Shooting a commercial or things like that but it was the first time for me to shoot and direct a 3-D shoot, which was pretty exciting. I usually put my camera, angle, and lens on a real set. But to be able to do it in 3-D was such a thrill and it kind of changed a little bit the way people work because they told me that they usually want a pretty well defined story board then they build the 3-D and since I’m more of live action it’s like let’s build the set first and then I’ll pick the camera and move. It allowed us to really pick some crazy moves I wouldn’t have thought of if I had to think about it before but the way we did it we built the whole office in 3-D the subway station and train and everything and all the characters were moving in. It was like a train set and all those guys moving so it wouldn’t be interesting if we shot it from the top or if we do a 360 or a spin off so it was a little bit more work for them and some thought we were going crazy but I think that’s also why the video looked good.

Ryan Bradley , Animator on Scent of a Robot :

MVW: As you developed the robot, how did you work with Alex ?

Ryan Bradley: Actually he worked with one of the other members of the company, Bashir, on illustrating the actual robot and how it should look like. They both sat down and started sketching out robots for a good couple of weeks. They both kept feeding off of each other and working on it and came up with the robot you saw. I had minimal input into that. I just saw a couple of them and said I don’t want to animate that or yeah I do want to animate that or that’s going to be impossible or that’s going to be cool…The live action and the directing was all Alex. I had little to do with the live action. The dancing was mine… my little baby. And then some of the motivations of just making the character move throughout the rest of it were just the story that everyone had developed. I would do something like say make the robot drunk like in the last scene, make him stumble around and I would do it the way I felt it would look good and I would show Alex and he was like okay maybe if you hit here instead and did this and maybe if he fell a little earlier, make sure he falls in this spot so it flows into the next scene and that is the sort of interaction we would generally have from scene to scene.

MVW: The actual dance sequence was pretty intensive. Where did you get the idea?

RB: We looked to Pete for some of it. We know that he had a good collection of Hip Hop videos so he brought in a couple of his favorite guys, we watched a couple of his videos there and we had actually bought one of those “How to” videos about Hip Hop dancing, which takes you through step by step and I was studying that for a while. I just did some of the moves and worked with the editor Damien Baskette. He developed and kind of edited together some of the different clips of videos that we really liked. If we liked the footwork here or the arm movements from the dancers, he edited a nice little sequence for reference for me and I would study it. We went through that and I animated the robot and improved upon it as best as I could, given how the robot could move and such because the robot can’t move like a human can so I had to do some leeway… that’s just the imaginative work part of it I guess.

MVW: What were the steps were taken to create the animated robot?

RB: The first step obviously was the sketches and from that part, one of the principals took the sketch and put it into 3-D which we used a program called Softimage XSI 4.0 and he modeled the robot to make it look like the sketch the best he could and then he passed it to another principal, Damijan Saccio, who actually put the bones in the robot, the bones give the robot the ability to move. Like the robot has an arm but then you put an arm bone in it so it can actually move. Then he set up what’s called the rig so I could animate it easily and then he gave that robot to me and to Jake Slutsky, another animator. I took the base robot and started animating it while Jake Slutsky took the robot and actually put the textures on it, made it white with the red stripe and made the visor look with the green glow inside of it and all that. And he did that separately while I animated it and then I took my animations and pasted it on the textured robot. We did all that in the Softimage program.

MVW: Well it came out great. How do you get a robot to have a robot look and hip hop moves?

RB: The animation actually took me longest, even longer than the dance scene is what I call the walk cycle, animation in the street. The robot will take one step and then you cycle that over and over again and make him walk from place to place. That took me so long to get the right balance of a smooth laid back hip hop guy with a rigid sort of robotic movement of the robot. If you watch him he looks like he has this really cool little walk but it’s also where he likes to coddle almost, kind of like pauses in between. It took me so long to get that but I was kind of happy about that the way it came out in the end.

UVPHACTORY utilized Adobe After Effects 6.5, Apple Final Cut Pro 4.5, Softimage|XSI 4.0, Adobe Photoshop CS and Adobe Illustrator CS during the course of this project.

Credits:

The UVPHACTORY creative team responsible for the live action shoot and the remarkable animation included Principle/Co-Founder Scott Sindorf; Principle/Co-Founder Damijan Saccio; Creative Director Alexandre Moors, Senior Producer Brian Welsh, Director of Photography (Live-Action) Nick Tramantano, Senior Designer/3D Animator/Compositor Jake Slutsky, Lead Character Animatior Ryan Bradley, Designer/3D Animator/Compositor Bashir Hamid, Compositor/Designer Colin Hess, Editor Damien Baskette and Production Assistant Alexis Stein. UVPHACTORY directed the project.

Wayne Coyne, the leader of The Flaming Lips, talks about expanding his role with the band by sharing directing duties last month with Bradley Beesley (Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 2). The Flaming Lips’ new track SpongeBob & Patrick Confront the Psychic Wall of Energy was written and performed for the movie soundtrack to the SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, which was released in November. It might seem an odd fit for an anarchic band like the Flaming Lips to participate in a kid’s movie, but the playful, positive quality of the track and the lighthearted, goofy images can be enjoyed by all ages.

Music Video Wire: I understand you directed the SpongeBob & Patrick Confront the Psychic Wall of Energy music video.

Wayne Coyne: Yeah, as much as directing these sorts of things has to fall to somebody, I’m the guy responsible for it. Luckily, I was able to work with Bradley, who has collaborated with us in the past. He knows tons of people in Austin so the group we worked with was competent and experienced, and could make all the crazy sets and props we needed. I think the producers actually wanted it to come from the mind of someone who was already viewed as being as absurd as possible. Who else could get the Flaming Lips to dress like giant pieces of food inside a Styrofoam mouth full of bad teeth? If a big time Hollywood director asked us to do it, we would have been humiliated. Of course, when we do it to ourselves, we’re just doing stupid things like we always do.

MVW: Could you talk about writing the treatment and the pre-production for a music video that was going to be attached to a kid’s movie.

WC: Since SpongeBob Square Pants is for little kids the audience is mostly kids with their parents, there could have been some hesitation on the part of the producers in calling the Flaming Lips to contribute to the movie. Even though I think what we do appeals to children, it is still pretty much weird adult stuff. It’s not disturbing but we do play by our own rules. When Stephen Hillenburg (creator of SpongeBob SquarePants) and I talked over some ideas, it was clear that what SpongeBob and the Flaming Lips could do together had some limitations.

Writing the treatment was easy, but then I thought, if they’re going to give us a bunch of money and I can use Bradley and all our people, we could do something truly absurd. But I wanted to do something that when you saw it on the page you would be able to picture it in your mind. A lot of times music videos have a style to them, like some special mood or lighting, that can’t be described in words. You can say we’ll put this light on the band and it will make them feel epic, but everybody has a different idea of how that will look. When we said we were going to dress the band as pieces of a giant krabby patty, with me as a piece of cheese, Michael as a tomato, Kliph as the bun and Steven as the mystery meat playing music inside a giant salivating mouth, there might have been some variations, but you pretty much get it. I wanted the producers to read it and think we were crazy to do it, but our philosophy is: do what you really want first instead of holding back. When you call on the Flaming Lips that is pretty much a given.

MVW: Incorporating the “behind the scenes” footage in the finished video was a nice effect.

WC: We wanted to document it so the audience could see how much fun we were having and that these things are not meant to be big, serious, artistic statements. There were times when we looked pretty miserable because you can only stand there getting that fake spit we concocted thrown at you for so many hours before it starts to show. But when you can see the crew having fun with it, it gives the whole video a perspective of sincerity, especially when you see the crew is genuinely smiling and laughing.

Life is just too short not to like what you do. The people we work with feel the same way. They’re into taking chances, having fun and working hard but not putting the work above the idea of enjoying ourselves while we do it. That said, I think it is serious and takes a lot of art and costs a lot of money and we have a responsibility to promote the movie.

MVW: When promotions sent me the SpongeBob CD I was surprised to see that there were several noted artists that played on the soundtrack.

WC: You never know how these things are going to go. We did Austin Powers, Batman and quite a few other movie soundtracks that were not actually played during the movie. Things change because these projects are developed so far in advance. You simply sign up for it. After talking to Stephen Hillenburg, it was clear that, for the most part, the soundtrack would be his taste in music. He gets to do whatever he wants because SpongeBob SquarePants has turned into a billion-dollar icon. We were getting ready to go up to Dave Friedman’s studio anyway to do some DVD 5.1 remixing of Soft Bulletin so we thought we’d see what we could come up with while we were there. We contoured the verse/chorus thing of a tune Stephen had been working on that SpongeBob could do. We sent it to them and they liked it. Next thing we knew we were in those giant bubbles, because we didn’t have any idea we were going to be making a video.

Sanaa Hamri: I have always wanted to work with Lenny and Prince. They are the two artists that I really feel connected to. Lenny and I met in LA and talked about the concept, which was to not really be stuck to a concept, because I didn’t want it to feel contrived. It’s a day in the life set in the San Francisco/Oakland area. The video has a little edge to it because everybody there is just “being.” Lenny and the other characters are not conscious of the camera.

It’s harder to do a video when you’re just shooting randomly and have to catch moments that seem natural. Even when everything is story boarded and perfectly designed it’s difficult to capture moments that feel completely natural, because people freeze up in front of the camera. The key here was to create an environment that feels like we’re just hanging out. We were able to infiltrate the different neighborhoods and make the locals part of the video. There were no actors. Casting was done there using real people. It was a big risk for the record label to take but they had faith in my capabilities and Lenny wanted a video like that as well. The video is a lot more difficult than it seems and required a lot of thought and spontaneous creation to make it feel fluid and easy.

MVW: It’s like trying to create a documentary but you’re making it up as you go along.

SH: For example, the kid on the bike with the foil rims was in that neighborhood when I scouted it three days before so we told him we were shooting on Saturday and to please come by. We didn’t have phone numbers on him, so we didn’t know if he would show up at all. When he showed up, it wasn’t like, “Go into hair and make up.” It was just like great! He came! I was praying that the kid would show up because I loved his bike. It was a very spontaneous creation and we had to have faith that people were either going to show up or not.

MVW: How did you shoot the scenes as he was walking down the street?

I did everything hand held because that gives an intimate, voyeuristic feel to the piece. Cameras on dollies or cameras on cranes or steady cams would feel contrived and wouldn’t make it feel like he was really walking down the street. This is an introspective piece where you don’t know whether he is actually seeing the images then and there or if it’s what he saw a the previous day. It’s part of that moment when you’re walking alone and just being yourself.

MVW: What about the look of the film?

The look is super-saturated but with a gray and blue color tone to it, we did that in the transfer. That cinematic effect was exactly what I was trying to achieve, something not too glossy and overly lit, which I generally don’t like. The song tells me what the look is going to be versus me imposing a look on the piece. It was for the mood of the piece, I mean the song’s called “Storm.” The blue and gray tones make the reds go very deep so it’s super-saturated but not in a pop kind of way.

MVW: The time lapse is a nice effect for the video.

The time lapse is supposed to give the dramatic effect of time passing, and you’ve interviewed me before, I always talk about time. In this piece, time is really eternal. So everything passes by quickly but it’s still there. I just heard time lapse at the beginning and I heard time lapse at the end, book ended it and felt that it worked well with the piece.

MVW: So Jay Z was already on the track, did you have any contact with him at all or anything about the video?

Jay Z is retired so he’s not doing videos or anything like that, but just because he’s retired doesn’t stop us from creating and doing new concepts. Lenny surprised me when he started to rhyme Jay Z’s rap. And it looked so good and it was really funny, it was just a great moment. Since this was a spontaneous creation, we decided to put him and some of our friends up against the wall and have them rhyme.

MVW: It came off great. I was surprised to see Lenny doing this type of song but when he started rhyming, I thought, this is definitely a new direction for him.

SH: Lenny embodies both sides. He’s mixed; his father is white, his mother is black so he embodies everything. He never had the opportunity to do this type of video and I think that’s one of the reasons he wanted to work with me because I see every side of him. This enabled me to take this particular side. A lot of people are shocked to see Lenny in this type of scene, but it’s his scene as much as the rock scene is. It’s just what he has and has not explored. He seems very comfortable with it because it’s part of him.

MVW: And it comes across on the video. I read that Crash was your DP, have you worked with him before?

SH: That was the first time. It was really interesting working with him because we had to develop a style of camera work together. The look and style we used is mine so Crash had to take on my way of shooting things. It wasn’t a challenge for him but we had to get into a kind of zone.

MVW: How do you edit a piece like this, especially within such a short amount of time?

SH: To edit a piece like this in two days is pretty much unheard of because it’s a four-to-six day edit. I had a support team help me because I wouldn’t have been able to do it by myself. The editing process is where the video takes place and is key to the work. I prefer to do it my self and feel that I do the best job.

MVW: The story line for Musicology video is great. There are really two videos, one with the performance piece and one with the story of the young fan mimicking Prince’s moves. What was it like actually working with Prince?

Working with Prince is very collaborative so he allows the creative process that I go through and is definitely supportive of creating in freedom. Prince is independent and
does whatever he wants to do so he’s very big on that. He wants people who are on his creative team to be able to do that. We talked about the concept, I wrote a treatment and we shot it. He’s very easy to direct because he needs no direction. He’s done this long enough to know what it takes to do a great video. Prince was extremely supportive.

MVW: The young fan dancing with the vacuum cleaner was great. Did you have that all storyboarded or was that spontaneous?

SH: This was not like the Lenny video; this one was storyboarded. The kid is a metaphor for Prince as a child. We wanted to show how back in the day, old school style, kids just listen to music they like over and over again, just having fun in the bedroom type of situation. So I think that was personal to Prince.

MVW: How did you approach editing those pieces to make them work together as one?

It was a very easy edit because all of Prince’s performance was very on point. He hit every line and looked good in every shot so it wasn’t really hard for me to cut a performance piece together. Then I build up the story of the kid until he shows up at the concert. The kid is more like an abstraction of Prince’s mind being in the concert than whether he’s really there or not.

MVW: Was there a lot of art direction in those locations, for example, inside the old record store?

The entire video has a retro vibe, but we weren’t trying to emulate the 60’s or 70’s. The idea was to take the old school vibe and add it in the most modern way. The art direction has hints of retro, however it is in the present day.

MVW: How were you able to convey the concept of Jadakiss Why music video in a written treatment ?

The treatment came from the lyrics of the song and actually reads exactly like the video plays out. Using the lyrics made it easy but it’s also very powerful because of the subject matter. I like to convey some sort of message in everything I do. Jadakiss was a perfect opportunity to speak to the media, speak to kids, speak to the masses, speak to the radio channels, speak to the TV channels all in one video and that’s what’s exciting about it. When I wrote the treatment I was conscientious about following what Jadakiss said. I wanted to create a visual piece that people can watch because it’s cool and get something out of it at the same time.

MVW: Describe the process as far as knowing what you want to shoot and how it will look in post?

SH: I know what I want to shoot and what it’s going to look like. I would never put myself in a situation not knowing what the outcome is going to be. Also I have a technical background as an editor. I try to be as creative and free as possible when I’m directing. I only do things in one or two takes unless something technically goes wrong with the lighting or the camera move or whatever. Editing is all about timing and knowing what to put where and how you’re going to use it. You need to be able to see the entire piece in your head before you shoot it, because if you don’t you won’t be able to create a complete piece that conveys your story clearly.

MVW: He just did his thing, there was really no acting involved. He had a message and just went for it and it comes across on the video without being contrived.

SH: Once you get the artist comfortable in front of the camera, you really get to feel them and see them. That’s what a music video should be, regardless of all these concepts and effects, and the direction, and the directors, and everybody’s egos. That’s not what’s important, what’s important is that we really see who the artist is and what they stand for, whether it’s a political issue or whether they stand for champagne and tits and ass. The point is to see the person that they are.

MVW: The biggest challange is to capture the natural feel that you work so hard to achieve with out the viewers realizing what they are seeing.

SH: It should always be that way. It should never feel difficult. When a person watches a music video, they should just be in that world for three-and-a-half to four minutes. They shouldn’t think. Once they start thinking too much about the shots and “I wonder what happened” and blah, blah, blah then we’ve failed. Our job is to suspend reality for that time. That’s what I strive for in my music videos. I’m not trying to showcase or show off talent or technical abilities or anything like that. It’s about creating a mood or a time, it’s for the artist.