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Digital art heralds a new generation
of music videos
When it comes to creating music videos,
there is no chicken-and-egg quandary; the music, rather than the video,
is conceived first. However, this linear process became scrambled for
the Detroit-based rock band Robb Roy's What If. Instead of the
band seeking a partner to generate the accompanying imagery to its song,
in this case, it was director and digital artist Kevin Carrico who
approached a band member, pitching a visual concept he believed was in
harmony with the band's lyrics and melody.
For some time, Carrico longed to
incorporate a cloak-and-dagger story line along with a black-and-white
film treatment into a project, but had little opportunity to do so—that
is, until he heard What If. With its moody tone, the song became
Carrico's muse, as he created a visual story of emotional depth that
unfolded in a classical motion-picture fashion.
Carrico interpreted the song as a plea to
belong and be accepted. To him, the ultimate state of not belonging is
not being alive or real, and a character that best exemplifies that is a
doll, like Pinocchio. "I started thinking how lonely it would be knowing
you can never belong, and this became my starting point," he says.
The imagery in What If is computer-generated, with
a few exceptions, including video of the band members (appearing
here on the monitor), which was shot with a Sony 24p camera, whose
crisp format maintains a cinematic quality and composites well with
the CG. |
Over the course of a year, Carrico worked
with the band to distill the essence of the song into a series of visual
sequences whose style resembled that of films from the 1960s. In
particular, he used an ominous film noir treatment, enhancing the
soulful song through the use of contrasting black-and-white imagery.
The result is a portrait of loneliness,
told through the visualized thoughts of a modern super spy. "I wanted a
Stanley Kubrick Dr. Strangelove look blended with a silent-film
style," says Carrico.
Surprisingly, rather than creating this
retro film design through cinematography, Carrico achieved it using
state-of-the-art computer graphics, including 3D animation, a digital
character, and virtual sets. "This is not a style you typically see in
3D animation," Carrico points out. "However, it's a look I've always
liked, and I've wanted to do a project of this artistic level for a
while." Directing brightly lit, product-focused television commercials
didn't allow him that opportunity, nor did any of the other pop-rock
music videos he had previously produced. "I wanted to break out of those
molds with an idea that was off-center from the norm."
Carrico would have done so by building
physical sets and then filming the action if given an unlimited budget.
But the reality was that he was working with limited funds. Being in the
unusual situation of having both digital artistry and directorial
experience, Carrico knew he could achieve his cinematic storytelling
through the use of digital tools and techniques. And the extent to which
he could rely on CG was even more apparent to Jon Synnestvedt, Carrico's
founding partner at 3D animation boutique Skylight Digital Images.
"I started laying out the video in [NewTek's]
LightWave as an animatic, thinking I'd film a large part of the action
in HD and composite the video into synthetic sets," Carrico recalls.
"But the more I discussed this with Synnestvedt, the more he convinced
me that we should do most of the work in LightWave."
In the end, all the imagery became
computer-generated, with three exceptions, two of which appear on a bank
of video monitors (which are 3D models) in a sequence reminiscent of the
war room scene from Dr. Strangelove. One segment includes clips
of the band members, who were filmed with a Sony HDW-F900 24p camera.
That footage is interspersed with shots
of another live performance in what appear to be home movies that the
main character (who is 3D) begins watching. These video
sequences—depicting the character's thoughts and imagination—feature
real actors, whom Carrico filmed with a Panasonic AG-DVX100 mini-DV
camera. Later, he processed the footage so it would resemble grainy
Super 8 film from the 1960s.
The last live segment, shot in HD,
immediately follows the home-movie segments. In it, Roy imagines himself
celebrating something only a real person has: a birthday.
Director Kevin Carrico used a bleak film noir
style for What If, with stark lighting and obscuring, deep shadows,
along with integrated fog and silhouettes. |
"It's unclear if the movies are scenes
from the character's past or just scenarios he longed to experience but
never did," explains Carrico. "But in the final shot, you discover that
the guy is not real, but a toy from a spy kit, wishing it were alive."
The use of color, in addition to
establishing an overall mood, also played a major part in the
storytelling, especially in the "war room" sequences. Carrico used black
and white throughout the video, but when the character sees himself as
real in the birthday party segment—his perceived reality—the director
applied color, although that eventually fades once Roy realizes his
situation.
Key to pulling off the surprise ending
was the integration of a digital character that looked like a real
person, but not so real as to contradict the story ending. Handling this
particular modeling mission was Synnestvedt, who referenced photographs
of the character's live counterpart in the home movies while
constructing the digital double. To make the model more authentic, both
he and Carrico applied photographic textures with Right Hemisphere's
Deep Paint 3D, and used Worley Labs' Sasquatch hair-simulation tool for
the character's locks.
To ensure that the model moved as
lifelike as it looked, Synnestvedt used Kaydara's MotionBuilder to apply
motion-captured data, provided by mocap studio Motek, to the model.
Afterward, he and Carrico were taken aback at the overall realism of the
CG character. In fact, at times it looked too real for the story line,
requiring Synnestvedt to cut out some of the more believable action.
Like the main character, the sets are
virtual as well, built in LightWave and textured with Corel's
Photo-Paint. And Carrico doesn't regret going digital for that task,
either. "Had I used video, I would have been committed to certain camera
angles or camera distances, or I'd have to reshoot the scenes," he says.
"With CG, I was able to control all the variables."
Nevertheless, Carrico admits that despite
his familiarity with computer graphics, it still was difficult, as a
filmmaker, to embrace the medium for achieving photorealistic character
performances. But he changed his tune halfway through the project when
he realized that nearly all of the scenes up to that point had been done
digitally instead of being shot live. "There were parts I was hard-set
on filming, but once we figured out how to do it in CG, we were able to
do it faster and cheaper," he says. "After that, I kept asking if there
was anything else we could do in CG, because I was finding that I had
more control retaining the cinematic look, and that was very important
to me. Digital tools enable you to be not only extremely photorealistic,
but extremely artistic as well."
Achieving this cinematic style in
LightWave, however, required experimentation with filters and software
plug-ins to eliminate the typical "electric, self-illuminating" look
that is a computer graphics hallmark. These programs included Evasion
3D's Shadow Designer for controlling the shadows that were vital to the
video's theme, and DigiEffects' Cinelook and Delirium tools for a
film-stock look. "I didn't want even one frame to look CG," says
Carrico. "Even though there are some modern references in the video, I
wanted it to look like the sequences were shot in the '60s. Moreover, I
wanted it to be one of those atypical examples of 3D that you see now
and again, usually in animated short films from Europe."
Without a doubt, What If pushes
the state of the art in music videos with its cinematic and storytelling
appeal, so much so that Carrico describes the project as a music-based
short film. Unfortunately, Carrico has had to find outlets other than
MTV for this offbeat project, one of which is the Web. "Ironically, the
video and song are about fitting in," Carrico says, "but the video
itself doesn't exactly fit into the typical music video world."
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