Of all the music promos you can currently bring to mind, how many of them would you say feature a retrofuturistic journey at their heart (it's OK I can wait while you think about it)? In his promo for Gothenburg band Den Stora Vilan's För Långt Ut, director Joan Manuel Urquiaga Valdes pays respectful homage to some of cinema's greatest sci-fi adventures of yesterday such as Solaris and 2001:

A long time pet project of Valdes', he approached Den Stora Vilan towards the end of 2011 with the promo concept. As happenstance would have it, the band had a few tracks ready during the pre-production phase of recording their second album, with För Långt Ut being the closest match lyrically to his original concept.

Capturing all green screen elements and interiors in studio over a day, with an additional day dedicated to location shooting, cinematographer Niclas Sandberg opted to shoot the film on non-standard lenses, the resulting footage combining well with established practical visual effects techniques to create the music video's distinctive look and feel without an excessive reliance on 3D. Valdes explains:

Most of the film was actually shot through a classic Vistascope anamorphic lens mounted on the lenses. This gave the otherwise familiar DSLR footage a genuine vintage look.

Post production and VFX started immediately after the shoot. The bigger part of the VFX work was done by myself and me having a day job meant doing this during nights and weekends. A lot of old tricks were used such as matte paintings and fish lines. This to avoid using too much 3D where we could and get a more vintage feel to the effects.

The resulting film successfully references its towering inspirations without ripping them off, a tightrope act which many a filmmaker has fallen afoul of. Let us know in the comments of any other well-used, but not abused, references in films you've seen.

Link: The Evil Eye

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