Nando Costa from Bent Image Lab directed this dark, avant-garde music video for Modest Mouse’s latest single, ‘Whale Song.’
The expressive and experimental six-minute clip plays out more like a short film–utilizing stop motion, visual effects and motion graphic techniques to create an alternate reality that feels dystopic at times.
Overall the video is a stunning visual achievement grounded in it’s impressive ability to grab the attention of whomever is watching it.
Check out Bent Image Lab’s flickr photostream for a bunch of nice production shots.
Here’s a partial quote about the project. Click through for the entire thing.
“The visuals follow an artist who enters his personal sanctuary where he is presented with a hand-crafted drawing tool that assists him in materializing his mental impressions. Through drawing circular patterns, the machine discharges an endless web of yarn that guides him through his visual representations of his memories. The story progresses to reveal that he is divided between two worlds, one of dull reality and the second of warped memories. In the process of finding a way out of his consciousness, he is trapped between the two competing spaces, which eventually inflict lethal damage, acting as metaphors to self-destruction.”
“This lyrical and moving piece was conceived by Nando Costa working closely with lead singer/guitarist Isaac Brock to polish some of the film’s intricacies. Featuring a seamless combination of live-action and stop motion that alternates between stage shots of Modest Mouse and a spiraling dream-like world of ever-shifting landscapes, Whale Song is a stunning representation of the combined capabilities of Nando and Bent. The variety and execution of the VFX portions of the video – from yarn reeling into complex patterns to a guitar that plays with no musician attached – strongly evoke the confused and surreal patterns of one’s warped memories. Additional creative touches such as animated and intricate photographic collages and giant CG snails sliding across the band’s stage – add variety and depth to the surreal world.
“This new video is the perfect showcase for the benefits of the collaboration between myself and Bent,” noted Costa. “I typically wouldn’t have created a film with this much live-action or stop motion, and Bent also wouldn’t normally approach a project with such a strong motion graphics influence, which is what I have long specialized in. With such well integrated in-house teams, I can’t imagine that there’s a project out there that we couldn’t pull off.”
One of the challenges in Whale Song was to recreate the contours of an ever changing, disorienting and intriguing series of landscapes. Costa shot the majority of the piece with Bent’s RED One cameras, which came in handy for their 4K capabilities when adding camera movement in post. In order to create the feeling that lead singer/guitarist Isaac Brock was being split up between two competing scenarios of pure reality and his imagination, for example, Costa mounted two of the RED cameras side by side on a custom plate, each with identical lenses set at an angle to simulate a stereoscopic effect.
In another instance, band members that appeared to be standing on the ground were actually hoisted aloft and secured to a fake ground plane, which meant that the stage floor was perpendicular to the ground. This situation intentionally restrained their flexibility and shifted the gravity, adding oddness to their movements.
Costa used a variety of frame rates, ranging from time-lapses at 6 frames per second, to 1000 fps shots from a Phantom camera to give the feeling of variety of speed in the character’s memories. Blue screen stages were used extensively to place Isaac against the varying landscapes of mountains, dense forest valleys, and deserts. Bent’s CG department was also responsible for creating significant portions of the video’s landscapes and scenic elements.
During production, Nando and his team relied solely on a very detailed script containing technical and creative notes, live-action and animation guidelines, with specifications for composting and stop motion, which were all previously defined and polished by the director. “From what I’ve learned, producing a project at Bent is a wonderfully self-contained experience,” noted Costa. “From building intricate props to figuring out complex CG shots, Bent has specialists in all fields. I’ll walk over to the stage for live-action, then back to compositing, load the footage and work from there. It makes the whole process immeasurably easier, and creatively freeing.”
“Seeing this video makes me feel good about what we’ve done here at Bent”, stated Bent EP Ray Di Carlo”. We set out to establish a creative clubhouse atmosphere where talented people like Nando could come to work. I’ve always admired directors who can hold a project’s final vision in their minds eye and are able to let the talents around them do their respective jobs for a projects whose creative whole becomes more than the sum of it’s parts, and that defines Nando. Seeing Nando come in, suddenly doing things that he wasn’t used to doing, and still delivering at a high creative and technical level, means that David, Chel and I were able to create a place where everyone learns others’ disciplines. That’s rare. It’s what we set out to do – what we originally wanted — but when you see it work, it’s amazing.”
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