When one of my roommates moved to LA to pursue a full-time screenwriting career, I used the following criteria to choose a new roommate: "which among our applicants is the most talented filmmaker?" Instead of shooting stills of my Brooklyn apartment I had shot a walkthrough video on my RED (it was sitting on my desk so it was actually easier than taking a bunch of photos, but... most overkill apartment video ever!) and so there were a lot of people to choose from. Paul Trillo, it turned out, had seen me speak at the Vimeo festival and I had backed his Kickstarter campaign, even though we'd never met, so the choice was easy. Paul moved in and promptly shot this lovely music video on his Canon 7D:
From The Peach Kings' latest EP, Handsome Moves.
Shot with the Rokinon 14mm Lens (there's a newer Cine version) on the Canon 7D with the Technicolor Cine Profile. Paul used AE Keylight (ships with After Effects) for chroma keying and Knoll Light Factory for the lens flare. Paul said he did "a little bit of optics compensation to correct the 14mm distortion and then optics distortion reapplied as a universal adjustment layer. The camera movement was just a lot of tweaking and tweening in the AE graph editor."
I asked Paul to do a VFX breakdown video as I thought he did an excellent job of making the end result look deceptively simple; I knew there was a lot going on when his estimated After Effects render time was 25 hours! We loaded the AE project file on my Hackintosh and it was able to tackle the music video in "only" 4 hours.
I should also mention that Paul is a fellow member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective (more on that soon).
While there is considerable technical wizardry on display here, my favorite thing about the video is the use of blue/green suits and how Paul was able to utilize them to embody the idea of loneliness: I find the keyed-out figures to be a very effective demonstration of the lack of someone's presence. To me it's a great example of the technology serving the art and not vice versa. Thoughts of your own?
Links: The Peach Kings, Paul Trillo (Vimeo)
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23 Comments
Cool concept but the video was really boring after the first minute.
November 18, 2012 at 3:35PM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
I feel inspired and inadequate all at the same time...
Very awesome work, love it.
November 18, 2012 at 3:41PM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
Nice, very creative, this is a good example of a lot done with very little.....
November 18, 2012 at 4:14PM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
Loved it, great stuff!
November 18, 2012 at 4:19PM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
I agree, great concept and the blue man suits effect works well. Good job and thanks for posting the VFX breakdown!
November 18, 2012 at 4:37PM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
Really nicely done and a great concept - unfortunately the music doesn't catch my attention and the visuals alone don't keep me engaged for 4 minutes. But now I know how to find a new roomate
November 18, 2012 at 4:59PM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
I can barely get the basics right in After Effects. That program is really hard to get your head around.
November 18, 2012 at 6:59PM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
Pretty slick.
November 18, 2012 at 7:44PM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
Brave. Ambitious in its simplicity. Hard to conceive and execute with so little to work with. Taking notes here...
November 18, 2012 at 7:48PM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
Loved the overall look of the video.
I have a 7d with the same lens, which i love, and i am curious about what tool did he use to mitigate the lens distortion.
November 18, 2012 at 8:07PM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
Good question. The new Photoshop technique perhaps?
November 19, 2012 at 1:47AM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
I am not familiar with that new technique, could you elaborate? Thanks!
November 19, 2012 at 5:23AM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
There is an AE filter called "Optics Compensation" under Distort. If you enable reverse lens distortion you can sometimes balance out the edge lens distortion. You of course lose resolution.
November 19, 2012 at 10:24AM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
Thanks!
November 20, 2012 at 11:58AM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
Thanks for this! Cool concept
Looks like a lot of work, but those crazy Magic Lantern guys are also working on something kinda like this, Recording the "Live View frames" they are getting 4:2:2 JPEG photos at about 24fps, they are smaller than HD mind you but would make doing something like a this way easier!
November 19, 2012 at 12:24AM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
Damn him. I'm working on a similar video. I feel like I'm stealing now. ¬¬
November 19, 2012 at 7:35AM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
Awesome concept, but horrible choppiness to the footage not sure if that's DSLR to blame or encoding codec.
November 19, 2012 at 7:43AM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
Hmm, maybe check your playback? Looks plenty smooth to me.
November 19, 2012 at 4:37PM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
Try turning HD off. I'm at my parents for the Holiday and was having that problem. Plays fine after that.
November 22, 2012 at 5:48AM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
Very interesting, and cool. Good work, man!
November 19, 2012 at 11:13AM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
Fantastic idea and execution!
Thanks for sharing.
November 20, 2012 at 11:57AM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
Awesome work. Great video. People that make it complicated, never get congratulated (quoting Kid Cudi anyway). The real beauty comes when you can make something complicated look very simple and this video pulled it off perfectly.
November 22, 2012 at 9:31AM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
The Foundry's Keylight is an amazing Chroma Keyer. I wouldn't know what to do without it - no other plugin or program can chroma key compressed 4:2:2 or even 4:2:0 video like Keylight does! Hope they release an FCP X version soon
November 23, 2012 at 5:01AM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM