When music-video director Marc Klasfeld approached VFX Supervisor Chris Zapara about creating the "Heart Attack" music video for rock band Low Vs. Diamond, a simple idea rapidly became more complex.
"He was saying, 'Oh, it's just two people kissing,' Zapara recalls. "I'm like, 'OK.' He says, 'It's very close up,' and I'm like, 'That's fine.' And then he says 'Over the course of the video, they age.' And I said, 'What?'"
Aging effects are nothing new, of course, and most VFX jobs would simply employ multiple stages of make-up effects and a series of quick morphs to get through the process. But Klasfeld wanted his two performers to age ever-so-slowly in a single shot over the course of a three-minute music video, which turned out to be a fairly tall order. Zapara and his team at HAL — a VFX firm founded earlier this year by Zapara and Klasfeld along with director Tony Petrossian and original VFX producer Ed Irastorza — ended up creating an elegant Frankenstein's monster of a video, patching together bits and pieces from multiple takes (including performances by two different sets of actors) into each frame to create a convincing, almost imperceptible vision of the aging process. Watch the video, then read the Q&A below to find out how they did it.
That was an awesome video. the transitions were very hard to spot and the aging process was seamless! Great job!
Posted by Dennis Elrod on Thursday, October 23, 2008 @ 05:40 PM
2.
_ _ _k You! You made me cry. and I say that with great admiration and appreciation for the emotional journey you got me caught up in. The song would never "get" me emotionally, but your story line wiped me out. Congratulations
Posted by Marc Blake on Thursday, October 23, 2008 @ 05:54 PM
3.
I love this video. Simple concept but clever and quite moving. One negative thing, I didnt think the make up was great until the end of the aging process.
Posted by Darren Garcia on Thursday, October 23, 2008 @ 06:08 PM
4.
Wow...
This video is a great example why "I" want to get into videography "hot & heavy." Good job...
Posted by DaveInCampbell on Thursday, October 23, 2008 @ 06:15 PM
5.
Very well performed and produced. Shake is a great tool with talent behind it!
Posted by Alexander on Friday, October 24, 2008 @ 11:00 AM
6.
Love It!
Posted by Rey Dominguez on Friday, October 24, 2008 @ 01:49 PM
7.
Wow, you people will applaud anything, wont you?
Not only isnt it "excellent", but it's a rather poor attempt altogether. Both in terms of makeup FX, and also technically. Talk about a complete absence of the "suspension of disbelief"? The makeup looks like it was done by students, and some of the areas where images had to be "moved" to coincide and blend with the next images drew attention to themselves. It was also lit to make the aging makeup look really poorly done. The first bit of "aging" was comical. It looked like stage makeup.
For a student project, this is fairly decent. But if this is coming from people working in the industry, this is not even remotely up the the standards of other commercial directors and digital artists.
Posted by JewishChristian on Saturday, December 27, 2008 @ 03:49 AM
8.
Kudos to all involved in the production of this video. It is certainly clear that anyone who has been involved in production work in the VFX industry that this is close-up, slow aging process would be no small feat of effort on any budget. Your execution is definitely a success.
Posted by DJ on Saturday, January 24, 2009 @ 10:50 PM
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