Making Of

For the video I did with Neil Halstead, we definitely scraped by on a series of soft bribes – for instance, I drove my friend Matt to the beer depot to pick up a keg for his party and, in exchange, he agreed to be an extra in the video.

But aside cashing in all the owed favors from everyone that I know, my special effects designer (and all around wizard) Jayel Draco and I definitely had a few low-budget tricks up our sleeves from our years working together on video projects. Jayel was eager to show me this live-action animation technique he’s been honing on another gig for a while. Using After Effects, he was showing me how he could “nudge” live action footage to exaggerate things like facial expressions and body movements – think the “Black Hole Sun” video but less 90s. So when I was coming up with the concept for Neil’s video, I really wanted to find a way to use that. I felt like giving a really cheap-o looking ghost some really expressive (and blinking!) eyes could look pretty neat and, if I do say so myself, the final product IS pretty neat.  I love the idea of throwing a lot of subtle special effects into videos – especially if it’s a mixture of animation (like the eyes) and compositing (like the ghost walking through the girl’s bedroom door) or old-fashioned camera tricks (like the split screen at the end to “eliminate” the ghost’s reflection from the mirror. I feel like the best special effects are the ones that you DON’T notice – personally, I get numb looking at an all CG action sequence. So when I make a video, even if it’s only for , I like to mix it up, keep the audience on their toes, asking “how’d they do that?”

PS: How great is the Project Jenny, Project Jan video for “Junk”? Kathleen, Kit, the crew, the dancers and the band totally rocked that one.