Music videos: it takes more than scantily-clad, beautiful people to keep the MTV generation from changing channels

Post, Nov, 2002 by Ann Fisher

To shoot on the two identical sets, Riot used a motion control camera system, the Milo from Santa Monica's Camera Control, along with a proprietary software for Maya camera data import. Discreet Inferno artist/visual effects supervisor Stefano Trivelli composited matte paintings with the live action and 3D effects. Maya was used for photoreal set extensions, camera tracking and 3D matte generation.

THE CHALLENGE: Making seamless transitions between the two house sets, which were built nearly complete in three days. Quite an accomplishment, but not necessarily a precise one. The homes were not identical and the dimensions were off by a few inches. The trick was setting up the cameras in the exact same spots and lining up the footage in post. Before photography, Riot took extensive set surveys and, during, Trivelli worked with the motion control camera operator to manually keyframe the moves. They would run the move and split it to video tap with the previous take on a prior set. Whenever it would start to be a shift, they would work together to manually adjust the cameras.

SMART DESIGN

Rawkus Records knocked on Eyeball/NY's (www.eyeballnyc.com) door and dropped off a live action transfer that was supposed to be a hip-hop music video. The footage had not been shot with visual effects or graphics in mind. The director had been released. The instructions were: do anything you can to make this great.

The performers were Mos Def, Nate Dogg and Pharoahe Monch, all black artists. They had been shot on a sparse stage against black with swinging lightbulbs or lighted signs. "Because we've got a strong foundation in design and direction, we really try to come up with metaphor or story that will tie the piece together, because a lot of times we're looking at four to five setups with no real reason for anything: says Limore Shur Eyeball's creative director and owner.

Eyeball created an environment like a poster, freezing the singers in key moments and posterizing them. The camera moves around them and comes back out. One special effect turns a singers image into a baseball card. Type lyrics weave throughout live action. Eyeball spent a lot of time working on a technique that would solve the black on black problem--a lot of different passes of footage to separate highlights and medium tones from the black and dark areas so, at a moments notice, the designers could pull out and separate them in order to put type or graphic elements moving behind them.

Eyeball cut the video using Discreet Edit but has since upgraded in another direction to Apple's Final Cut Pro. All graphic and visual effects elements were created using 3DSMax and Adobe After Effects, Photo-shop and Illustrator. Eyeball is a design-inspired production company that does much of its own editing, directing of live action, and music and sound design.

"Any good program, story or visual that tells something interesting it can be slow as a snail if it gets your attention," says Shur. "In TV, they're always saying it's all about branding or your network but it's all about good programming, too. It's not about how fast you cut things up, how quickly you throw around graphic elements; it's about doing good work, smart design and smart storytelling. That's how we work here, We try to hit on something that's the answer to every other question. If we can find that one element, that one metaphor that will drive the whole spot Every designer/artist/editor understands that and it's easier for them to collaborate. In the end the piece looks really good and people don't understand why but they really like it."