A Conversation with the VFX Guys from the New Flight of the Conchords' Video, Ladies of the World

I work for a company that sells and distributes animaton software and plug-ins. I handle a lot of the marketing and one great way of bringing in traffic is to interview visual effects artists. This is an interview I just did for Toolfarm and I thought you all might enjoy it. I know you have lots of love for Flight of the Conchords. I do!

Brandon Parvini, Partner of Ghost Town Media and the lead colorist / compositor, and David Torno, Visual Effects and Motion Graphics Artist talk with Michele Yamazaki (aka Batface89) from Toolfarm about work on the most recent Flight of The Conchords video, Ladies of the World.

First the video.

Michele: : Thank you so much for talking with me today. This looks like a seriously fun project. How did you get hooked up with the job and Nima Nourizadeh / Partizan, the directors? Have you done many other music videos?

Brandon: We have a really good relationship with Partizan Entertainment. We essentially got our start with their director Ace Norton and from there began working with a slew of their other directors including Neon, Alma Har'el, and Cat Solen. We try to serve as tech support for them when they get some of these more complicated projects, when the Conchords video came up, we sprang at the opportunity to help them out and had been a fan of Nima's work for some time.

Michele: The job involved tracking the stunt double's heads with the singer's heads. I noticed tracking dots on the stunt double's cheeks, nose and chin in your photos.  Jemaine and Bret  were shot against a greenscreen and with a green cape.   How did you get it to match?  Can you talk a bit about the process of tracking and rotoscoping and matching angles? 

Dave: This was a very tedious process that had to planned out for the entire video factoring in the limitations we were facing. We had placed tape on the doubles faces for reference as to how their heads rotated and twisted. We made sure to keep our doubles aware of what was happening in each shot, but allowing them room to perform their stunts.

Dave: Some of the takes were really wild and crazy and we would have to come in and tone down the movement a little to make sure we were going to able to recreate the same move on the greenscreen with Bret and Jemaine. The most difficult part was getting Bret and Jemaine to match these moves and be able to maintain lip-sync. On set (greenscreen) we would run each guy through individually and have them watch a monitor playing back the footage from the shoot. This footage was played back, mirrored in some cases, and slowed down to 50%. This gave the guys a chance to lip sync and get the head movements down. It was a lot of practice takes before rolling the camera. Many times Brandon was physically holding the guys as they performed so we could get the head angle just right. We tried using the green cloth as much as possible to limit the amount of roto we would have to do in post, but in some cases it was helpful to have the shirt collar show so we could fit them on the body better.

Michele: I know you used Imagineer Mocha but switched back and forth with Silhouette FX tracker and possibly something else. Why did you need to use so many tools?

Dave: The tracking process was a mixed breed. For most of the work we were able to use Silhouette to track the greenscreen shots, usually tracking the nose area or glasses in Jemaine's case and stabilize it. Then the doubles faces were tracked with Mocha to get the the rotation and scale values for the original movement. Both plates were then assembled in After Effects and tweaked as needed to make the composite believable.

Dave: Each shot presented it's own challenge of tracking or color and had to be rethought every step of the way. There were a few times where there was a need to take two individual track point solutions from Silhouette and copy them into the After Effects tracker module and then apply rotation and scale solves from there. We just found the single point tracker there stronger than AE's (tracker) for the shots we had. There was one funny moment where we had a beautiful track on one shot but accidentally had the wrong greenscreen take in place and Bret's head started turning in a very uncomfortable direction, almost poltergeist style.

Michele: I saw tons of production shots on David's MySpace. At the shoot, did you have input on the shots because of how you would need to work with them in post? I imagine you would, having to match angles in post.

Dave/Brandon Most of those photos were taken during practice runs and setups. When on set we tend to already have a really good relationship with our director and in turn play a sort of wingman to them. We're all about the collaborative process, especially when on set, when time is tight, and it just has to be right. At times we may not be the most popular guys, as a performance can be awesome but turns out that the technical aspects of it weren't just right. Figure most of the people who don't know who we are onset just figure we're just some jerks from the label.

Michele: Ha ha, that I'd love to see! How about the color correction process?

Brandon: To say it was tough would be a bit of an understatement. Andrew Shulkind, DP for the video, and his team worked so hard to get he lighting angles to match the original shots, but in the end there was simply no way to get the perfect lighting match of a late spring day in Venice (California) with 30-mph winds inside our lil greenscreen stage in the middle of Sun Valley.

My emphasis was in blending the use of Red Giant Key Correct Pro's Color Matcher and Magic Bullet Looks Builder's 3 way Color Corrector and Colorista, to bring the values back in. On top of that i have an adapted film look from Photoshop that I put over all of the footage to help bring everything in there. Nothing like a nice coating of shellac to make footage sing.

Michele: He he. The video has a sort of yellowish 70's look to it. How did you attain this look? Was Magic Bullet Looks used?

Brandon: Magic Bullet was definitely used. We really swear by the software (though we wish there was a timeline in it... hint, hint). But in all honesty, the package has revolutionized how we color correct here. In terms of the exact method we used, suffice  it to say  that we never use just one plug-in  to really do anything. Think of it as painting,  a lot of very subtle layers can make some really elegant images.

Michele: I hear ya. You should see my arsenal of plug-ins. Can you talk a bit about the workflow of your team? How many people were on the team? What else was involved in post production, that we might not be able to see?

Dave/Brandon Once we got the edit, we essentially split ourselves up, tracking and grabbing the best selects from our second day of shooting. Once we had that in-hand, we began to pair up the footage components. Once most every one had at least been assembled and linked up, we then began the process of all the OTHER effects, including the construction of the camera whips, the roto and compositing of the girls during the RV scene, and some of the other little shots like making the forced perspective wheel spin. From there it was all a matter of the fine details and lots of retiming. Of course, at the end we did our final color correction and crossed our fingers for a good response once we sent this out the door.

Oh, by the way all the post was done by 2 people, yes you read that right 2 people...

Michele: Wow. Unbelievable. Were there any big problems you had to solve during post-production? 

Dave/Brandon Yes.  The first obstacle was how do make a video using similar techniques of a movie like 'Little Man' but with something comparable to one week of their catering budget. We had to be really crafty and come up with some good solutions, plus figuring out what to do when our compromises didn't fly. We walked into this planning for 5 shots, by the time we were given the edit we were looking at 25 shots, not including some of the other VFX scenes that sprang up. It's just kind of the nature of the beast, but still it was definitely a very sticky situation initially. There were lots of little headaches like keeping the guy's lip-sync throughout the videos and fighting mother-nature. For the RV scene we wound up with 4 different plates to put together, but because it was shot at dusk we had 4 totally different lighting and backdrop looks.

Michele: Are there any good tips for our readers?

Dave/Brandon Be persistent, invest in Red Bull and always be ready for the work around. Most of the time the shot won't be exactly as you had hoped or asked to be, but if you can reinvent your process, a lot of the time it will end up being better than you had hoped. Ingenuity is key. We kind of see ourselves as an engineer group with aesthetics, its the only way we could have done what we have thus far.

Michele: The video on You-Tube has a big black border around it. Is the final video still being tweaked?

Brandon: Sigh... no. its a 4:3 aspect ratio thing. Directorial Choice to reinforce the 70's feel and further separate itself from the modern footage at the beginning and the end.

Michele: Were Jemaine and Bret a total riot on the set? I'd imagine so!

Brandon: There actually quite RUDE....that's a horrible lie. They were awesome to deal with . Jemaine was such a champ. Even as he's sitting on a 105 degree greenscreen stage in a 70's polyester get-up and I'm spinning him round and round in chair to match the overhead shot. For some reason Jemaine really got stuck with some rough requests for the greenscreen stage, we really felt bad by the end of the day. All in all though its great to work with people who you can see actually appreciate everyone and their efforts. We knew they were good guys when in the morning of the first day there was a really insecure girl who recognized them from the show. She was in from out of town and her dad ended up bringing her up the guys to get a picture, rather than saying they were busy, they happily snapped the shot and what's more began to chat the both of them up. The guys ended up hanging out with the father and daughter for the better part of the morning. Though we still are waiting for our autographs from them ;)

Dave: I really had a great time working with them. They are so talented and always throwing in a few bits of improve into the performance that really had us cracking up on set. Even a few times Bret broke down laughing at the silliness that he was creating during a take. A good example of that is a YouTube video I posted from the greenscreen shoot.

Both Guys Improving the Scene

Bret looses it half way and pulls Jemaine in to do something.

Michele: What is next for you both?

Brandon: FOTC has seemed to be the initial starting gun for the summer season that's going to be a busy for us. We're right now hard at work on one of Partizan's next videos for MGMT directed by Ray Tintori who directed their last video. Should be fun!

Michele: I love MGMT. Time to Pretend is my current favorite song and that video is really trippy!

Brandon: Also we hard working on two other videos for one our favorite directors Josh Forbes, one for Laura Bryna and Alkaline Trio. Both are really vfx heavy so we're going round the clock these days, but both should be really great to watch when done. The boy is just a video landing  monster, and we love him for it. As always we have a bunch of other items floating around, but again it looks like we'll have plenty more vfx to do this summer.

Dave: In addition to working with Brandon on the above projects, I am also currently heading up the vfx on The Heaven Project, Paul Walker's new film and I have another feature that I will be supervising vfx for that goes into pre-production in June.

Michele: Wow, you are VERY busy. Have a great summer and thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me.

Liam Finn - Second Chance and Gather to the Chapel

Excuse me if I gush, but I *LOVE* Liam Finn. Liam is a Kiwi and son to the beloved singer/songwriter Neil Finn, and nephew to Tim Finn. The boy has some musical genius flowing through his veins. (I warned you I would gush).

Liam's video for Second Chance, easily my favorite Liam Finn song, is directed by Angus Sutherland. The video looks as if it was filmed on 8mm and the projected video was cut up and effected. There are lots of interesting stop motion effects and the video works extremely well for the song, as it crescendos near the end and the speed of the video picks up. I'm very glad to see that the video is as original as the song.



'Gather to the Chapel' video is one continuous shot. This video has gorgeous camera control. Either Liam can run really fast behind the camera and get himself set up for the next shot, or they've really done a great job of matching shots. I'm sure this was programmed camera control, but it's so well done. It's seamless, not like they've made a quick cut on the back of a guys suit as they did in Hitchcock's rope. (Oddly - 'Everyone Gather to the Chapel' and no one is there.)

I had no luck finding any information on the director of this video.

A Conversation with Matthew Collings

This is an interview I did last summer with a musician and video artist for Toolfarm's Inspirations. I thought the Max Bumps readers might enjoy it. (And now you all know my secret identity.)

Matthew Collings, aka Sketches for Albinos, is an experimental musician and music video maker, living and working in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Sketches for Albinos album 'Red' came out in March 2007 on Imoto records and took Matthew over two years to complete. Each song is a highly-crafted piece of music and multi-textured and described by Rawkstar.net as 'an individual masterpiece's. It is available on iTunes.

Matthew put this same lush texture and intricate detail into his video for the song 'Routine'. We discuss the creative process and visualizing his music, using lo-tech and highly experimental techniques. We even touch upon the topic of synesthesia. If you're not familiar with that term, you better read the interview!

Download 'Routine' Video (iPod High Quality). Right-click or Opt+click to download.

Chat transcripts

Michele Yamazaki: Hi Matthew.

Matthew Collings: Hello.

MY: When we exchanged emails earlier, you said that you use "basic things for your audio". Can you tell me a bit about your creative process for making music?

MC: I actually try to use very basic things for sound and audio. I'm not hi-tech at all.

MC: I almost always start on a guitar. I'm a guitarist, but I like computers because of their power. I use many layers of things, mostly guitars, although they may not sound like it. You find things emerge in that way, organically and spontaneously.

MC: I also do most things on a digital 8-track machine and use the computer to tear things apart and to find new textures.

MC: When I make music, I always try to visualize it in some way.

MY: How did you go about visualizing the video for 'Routine'?

MY: The video has texture as well and matches the music perfectly.

MC: Routine... I had planned it for two years, after I went to the sculpture park where it's partly filmed. I went there at sunset, it was beautiful. It had this cold industrial look to it, like a Chris Cunningham video, or something by David Fincher. I love that mix of cold, electronic, distant, alien, with something warm, human and emotional.

MC: It's about twisting things into new shapes.

MC: I had this idea of it, like the images themselves should be able to bend, twist, flip colours, and suddenly change texture... all grainy, but not in an old, battered way. Texture is an important part of that, because something can be very familiar, and classic, but if it's wrapped up in a fresh or unusual texture, it suddenly becomes interesting.

MC: More hi-tech full of rich colours, like neon lights.

MY: Were the grain effects done with plug-ins or while shooting?

MC: I filmed it over two years in different places. The main texture effects are all real-time, totally filmed. There are no plug-ins used during the editing whatsoever.

MY: No kidding.

MC: I find people get easily distracted with plug-ins, thinking the plug-ins can do all the work for you. It stops you from having to use your imagination to produce new effects.

MY: The video is absolutely gorgeous. What techniques did you use to add texture to the video?

MC: It's actually done by routing the existing footage through an old tv monitor and then filming it again, on the same camera. The screen itself creates all those effects. Filming a tv screen is fascinating because it's a convex surface, light reflects differently off it, and the colours shift.

MY: Excellent trick! It does look really organic.

MC: I didn't capture exactly what I was looking for though.

MC: That was the aim! Organic, but in a twisted way.

MC: I love films by David Cronenberg, that twist what organicity is... blending machines and flesh and the like.

MC: In terms of experimenting, I think people are quite lazy these days

MY: I think a lot of people don't have the time or money to experiment as much as they like, too.

MC: If you listen to some of the first electronic or tape music made in the 40s, 50s, which took months, literally, at a tape recorder and slicer...

MC: and the products are still much more alien and far out that anything made on computers.

MC: The instant power of it can be counterproductive, I feel.

MY: Yes, I suppose so.

MY: I was just reading an article about creativity and they quoted Jack White of the White Stripes. The quote: "If we had five people on the stage, all the opportunity of a 300-track studio, or a brand-new Les Paul, the creativity would be dead. Too much opportunity would make it too easy. We just don’t want to be complicated, it seems unnecessary."

MC: When they first came out, The Stripes, I was really inspired by that attitude.

MC: When you place limits on yourself, you have to create, to test, to bend.

MC: When you have massive power at your fingertips, you get lazy because when you can do anything, you do nothing.

MC: I know people know try to start recording music, download loads of programs, and just get so intimidated by all the complexities of it all, they give up. That's such a waste.

MY: That's so true. You spend a good part of the creative process learning the technical aspects of a program.

MY: You said, "When I Make music, I Always try to visualize it in some way". Do you have synesthesia?

MC: I don't think I have synesthesia, but I'm fascinated by it.

MC: The most common form is to see colours in music, which I feel strongly.

MY: I went to a seminar on it a while back.  Very interesting.

MC: With the video too. It had to take on OTHER QUALITIES, be textural and the like, the cross senses.

MC: I released an album in March, and it had no titles, so I called it 'Red', which is a colour of that always seems to occur with me, even if I don't think about it. Red was just romantic and dark and rich and BANG!

MC: There was no way I cold find the way to sum up that period of my life, such an amazing time, with words or even a catchy sentence or title.

MY: Can you talk a bit about your editing process and the experimentation you went through?

MY: Does your final video look like what you had visualized when you wrote the song?

MC: We edited the video in Final Cut Pro.

MC: The song was actually the first song I ever did in this current setup, on my own. I wanted to do the video first, and chose that song.

MC: I had these visual ideas that I had to do...and I still haven't finished them really.

MC: The textural thing, and the synthesthia in video is the same that I want to achieve in music really, thing meshing and melting into one another in an unfamiliar but recognisable way.

MC: It feels like a big general idea, that is viscous in my mind, and it will always be there, shifting around.

MC: This the point in the conversation where I make lots of bizarre hand gestures to try to explain what I mean.

MY: He he.

MC: It kind of feels like some violent textural dough, that stretches and flips and is heavy and powerful. If that makes any sense at all.

MC: I wanted it to be even slower. Twice as slow. I just couldn't film it because I had no tripod, had to hold the camera, and it was -10°C!

MC: Have you seen 'Ganz Graf' by Autechre? It's the most amazing animation ever and helps the music to make sense, which it didn't really before, because it's so abstract.

MC: The video expresses this flipping, twisting thing, everything falling apart, coming back together, almost dancing, but it's still incredibly abstract.

MY: It does give the music a whole other dimension.

MC: It was also done years ago, maybe in 2001.

MC: I think that's one of the best music videos I've seen because it takes the music to another level, which is what video is for.

MY: That must've been crazy to animate. The timing is insane. I hope they had a plug-in to help them time it with the beats!

MC: It's incredible, isn't it! So complex.

MC: The machine comes alive...

MY: Every beat has something happen. It says the idea came from an LSD trip. I can believe it!

MC: Actually I think the texture and colour of music is one of the most important things.

MC: It's like with a painting, if the wrong shade of colour is used it just ruins everything. Same with production, everything has to feel right, be the right shape.

MY: You said it took 2 years to shoot your video. How long did your post production process take?

MC: When we actually we working on it, about two weeks, it was just that finding the time was difficult.

MY: What were some of the challenges you had in post production bring your vision to life?

MC: I actually wanted to film the whole thing again through a tv, and all the footage numerous times, to get 3 or 4 different versions of the same footage and mix them all together in layers, so they could, move and pulsate and flicker under one another.

MC: To be honest, it worked out exactly how I wanted, except the shots weren't long enough. I tried stretching the footage and slowing it, but it looked pretty crappy.

MC: Too cliched slow motion.

MY: I've got some terrific plug-ins I can sell you to smooth out your slow motion shots ;-)

MC: It should have a thicker texture, and the only reason it doesn't have it is because I gave up after two years of trying to get it done!

MC: I always work on things until they get almost exactly in line with what I had in my head at the time. It often takes 6 months to 2 years.

MC: I'm patient. Ha ha.

MY: Are you originally from Iceland?

MC: I'm originally from England. I moved here nearly three years ago.

MC: It's an amazing place. Best time of my life.

MY: I'm sure the scenery in Iceland is inspiring. It's the #1 place on my list of places to visit before I die.

MC: The thing about the scenery, especially in Reykjavik, is that it just becomes subconscious... you barely notice the sea and mountains at the end of the road, but everything just seems so HUGE, and you are part of it. It's inspiring in that way everyday.

MY: Have you started work on another video yet?

MC: Not really. I would like to do another one, but it's still forming. I should really start on another one. I have day dreams about music videos all the time, based on existing ones, but with whole new qualities over the top. A director friend of mine in Finland is making something to my music also.

MY: Very cool. Please send me a link when the video is online. I'd love to check it out.

MC: That may also take years... Ha ha.

MY: Thanks for talking with me, Matthew. It was so interesting.

MC: Thank you for inviting me. It's always a pleasure to try to explain these things. I always learn something from it

June 1 , 2007 02:06 pm EST

Flight of the Conchords - Business Time Video

The first time I heard Business Time, I was rolling on the floor laughing until it hurt.

Dsyfer's Rescue Me Video

This music video was created by the multi-talented Johan Daza, for his band, Dsyfer. Johan was a former student in my After Effects class and he is also the band's vocalist. This was his first big project in After Effects and his final project for the class. He used the Puppet Tool in After Effects CS3 to give his character organic movement. There are a couple of places where the video goes off track a bit, but overall I love the style and flow of the video and it really matches the mood of the song. Is it because Johan created the music and the video? I don't know, but I think it's terrific.

rescue me

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Klaxons' Golden Skans Video

Golden Skans was one of the first songs I heard at The Sixty One and immediately had to own. It was stuck in my head for three days.

This is an interesting videos that starts out with some text and particle effects, explosions, water effects, with orb shaped glass being shattered and interesting ribbon effects. Was that Trapcode 3D Stroke I see? You know I support and sell animation plug-ins for a living. I can't watch videos or movies without analyzing the effects. It's a blessing and a curse.

Stab the Matador Videos - Low Rider and Doctor

Here are two videos by the band Stab the Matador. The first is a professional video for the song Low Rider. It has interesting pulsating video effects and an awesome guitar sound. They had to use some sort of 'convert audio to keyframes' tool - my guess anyway. YouTube quality though. Meh.



Here's another Stab the Matador video for the song 'Doctor'. This one is by high school student Abby Wheeler of Harrisburg, PA. The tear effects are really cool. Abby did a lot of the editing 'in-camera' and used Final Cut Pro to finish it. Very cool, Abby. You have a future in this.

Genki Rockets' Heavenly Star Video

The name Genki Rockets serves them well (Genki means happy in Japanese). This has to be the happiest song of 2007. This is a drawn style. Could they have used Digital Anarchy's ToonIt?. There are lots of particle effects, which are always great, and lots or rainbows. I want to visit this happy little world... maybe buy some property, open a little shop...

The Mountain Goats' Sax Rohmer Number 1 Video

This is a song that I really worked hard to push to the home page and sho' nuff, this week it made it! Getting a song posted just gives me such satisfaction!

I can't imagine the planning that went into this video. It's amazingly great. It was directed by Ace Norton.