So it’s been a while since our last post, but we’ve been really busy……which is a good thing! This past summer, we were contacted by Roman White to help out on a music video for the country music band JYPSI. This was a great opportunity. We had never worked with Roman in the past, yet were very much aware of his work, so we were thrilled when he called asking for our services.

The concept was simple, straight forward and really fun to work on. “Fun” and “crazy” were the key words of direction by Roman. If you know anything about the band Jypsi, you know that they’re not your typical country music artists. They have a very unique style and Roman wanted the music video to reflect that.

On a technical and practical side, the video was to be shot entirely on green screen and the duration was 2:50 sec. Roman was shooting on the infamous Red One camera at 4k here in Nashville.

There were basically two main aspects of creating this fun video. The first was creating a high energy edit. Roman and his editor took care of that on their side, and did a great job jumping in and out on the beats, keeping the video alive through out the song. The other component is the environment the band would perform in. That ’s where we came in. I think the last time we counted there were 190 shots in the final cut. We had roughly two weeks to pull keys on all shots, and then create backgrounds. ( I would also add that some shots had multiple shots being layered in, so there were well over 200 shots to key… ouch!)

After watching the music video you may think it was total randomness. However, there was  somewhat of a method to our madness. Our first step was to analyze how many different types of backgrounds there were. We were able to determine differences based on camera angles and wardrobes. We separated the camera angles in two categories: wide shots with head-to-toe on the artists, and the rest.  Jypsi used 4 different wardrobes for the video. With these determining factors we decided to create a certain amount of backgrounds to mix and match up with.

To create these backgrounds we brought in some outside help. Graphic designer Keith Johnson (vieuphonik.com)  came in and worked with us churning out multiple  backgrounds for us to play with. When I say play with I mean bring into After Effects and add motion, light effects, and color correction. Our final step was to add all the funky scribbles and flickering polygons over the top to increase the madness.

All in all it was a great project to work on. The deadline was pretty tight, but who are we kidding…when is it not?