Getting out of the Car and into the Virtual Environment in Long Island City
Carstage Bridges Live Action and Animation for Zero Trust Music Video
As viewers of Zero Trust’s new Clouds video get an ear full of pounding hardcore metal rock, they are treated to an eye full of creative visuals thanks to filmmakers Jeremiah and Luke Dickey and some new tech at New York’s Carstage. A New York-based director/animator, Jeremiah Dickey has produced dozens of animated docs and short films for TED, but says, “It’s the first time I have done something incorporating live action and animation to this degree of immersion.” It was also a first for him to collaborate with his old friend, the band’s lead singer, BJ Allen. “When BJ approached me with the idea, we were enthusiastic to find a way to bridge live action and animation.
We immediately thought of Carstage, where my brother (cinematographer/photographer Luke Dickey) had done a previous shoot.” The 10,000 square foot facility offers movable LED walls, live on-set programming and color correction complete with an experienced team to guide from load in to out the door with final composed picture.
The brothers delved into the project with only a loose concept but knew that capturing a live performance was essential. They would only have a 12-hour shooting window to catch the band members all in town at once.
“This meant that I had to start working on the animation before knowing for sure what the final product would be, which is the polar opposite of how it usually works,” explains Jeremiah. “I had a bunch of the imagery figured out by this point, so I just composited the elements together in a number of different combinations for the shoot, which in turn, helped nail down the ideas for the rest of the video.”
With giant doors at one end big enough to let in a bus, it was a cinch to drive into Carstage and unload all the band’s gear. The Lead Programmer loaded the hard drives with Jeremiah’s artwork: a dozen iterations of animated landscapes that would appear behind the band, consisting of hand painted clouds, tree stumps and roots. “I had a rough idea of which elements would be assigned to each part of the song – like for the heavier part, we’d be underground in a kaleidoscope of roots, and so on. The final images were meant to represent a release and freedom of possibility.”
The band played and the images rolled. Dickey says, “None of us really knew what to expect, but it was pretty magical to see it all come together in front of the camera, and our own eyes. Rather than the usual sense of mystery with a green screen, with LED you get the feel of the whole thing immediately, right there in the moment. The band was into it, I think it definitely enhanced their performance.” “I also got fresh ideas while we were shooting, and was able to tweak the composites on the fly, which was only possible because of the fluidity of the set-up. For an animator it’s pretty mind-blowing to be able to work dynamically like that,” explained Jeremiah. During the shoot he alternated between standing with Luke at the camera on one end of the space, and sitting with Carstage’s Lead
Programmer as she loaded the footage and controlled the frames. Giant video screens running the animated backgrounds hung on rails from the ceiling, angled behind and alongside the band. The team moved them as needed for maximum impact. The flexibility and portability of the screens offered various options for the most dynamic shots. Sometimes an additional element of front projection flooded onto the performers, further blurring the line between animation and live action.
Luke Dickey operated camera in a combination of locked-down and handheld shots. “Luke’s familiarity with shooting in the space wound up being a huge asset, especially when we started messing with the front projection. We were able to experiment and play, and the results totally exceeded our expectations,” Jeremiah says. “We walked in unsure of what we would get, and walked out with exactly what we needed.”
When it came to editing the composed elements for completion, Dickey found it liberating, explaining, “The process allowed for so much freedom to make creative decisions in the moment while shooting, and being able to trust the creative integrity of that flow became a really useful constraint down the road as I sat down to finalize the rest of the animation. Post can be an endless rabbit hole of possibilities, especially for something like a music video,” he says. “Having the solutions we walked away with really informed and inspired the way the rest of it came together.”
The result is a rich array of compelling visuals that immerse the band in an otherworldly universe. “Ironically, doing these FX shots with this advanced technology, felt like coming around full circle to the trick films of George Méliés and the early days of cinema, when anything was possible,” concludes Jeremiah Dickey. “It’s inspiring to know that’s still the case.”
