Video for GentlemenHall's son 'Sail into the Sun'

  So for the last few months Ethan Goldhammer and I had been producing a video for GentlemenHall's new hit song. The song has been popping off, featured in Samsung and Target commercials (the Target ad premiered during the Grammys), as well as being played on a couple major radio stations. So needless to say, when they approached me about doing the video, I peed a little.    We came up with a great story idea, with levels of eye widening happiness that would match those of the song itself. A love story, of course. Two souls, living in a blank universe, who eventually come together. Once united they begin to fill their world with colors and patterns, and delight. Finally they unite forever as the sun that provides the new world all of its life.   Well, you can watch the video and see the story develop for yourself,   so what I'll talk about is how we did it.    We created our characters from paper, and decided that we could then have different sets of eyes for each character, which would make eyes blinking and looking in different directions an easy feet. We also cut out hundreds of construction paper triangles we could use to begin the pattern creations in the blank world.  

   

 

With some of our tools and thoughts in hand, we set out to build the torture chamber that I would spend the next 769 hours occupying. Bending over, making a tiny adjustment to the painting we were shooting, moving the paper characters ever so slightly, then sitting back up, then bending over making a tiny adjustment to the painting we were working on, moving the paper characters ever so slightly, then sitting back up, then bending over making a tiny adjustment to the painting we were working on, moving the paper characters ever so slightly, then sitting back up, then bending over making a tiny adjustment to the painting we were working on, moving the paper characters ever so slightly, then sitting back up. Of course this was totally worth it in the end. But here is that devilish torture chamber of back muscle doom:

Then we set out to time-lapse several different boards that I would be painting. Trying our hardest to not have my hands in any of the shots. This would all be footage of the characters creating the color and pattern and filling their world with awesomeness. We used the paper characters over the paintings during shooting. 

 Once we had all the footage shot, everything went into Goldhammer's hands to ruthlessly edit & kaleidoscope everything into the monster (cute, fuzzy, happy monster) that is the video for Sail into the Sun. Finally I created all the lyrics by digitally tracing every letter in the alphabet 3 times (to create that wobble effect) and then putting those triple letters into the formation of words. I then sent those files over to Ethan who dropped them into the video with class and ease. Boom, video. Here are some fun detail shots of the process:

We were lucky enough to have the video premier on the front page of MTV's Buzzworthy blog, here: http://buzzworthy.mtv.com/2013/04/24/gentlemen-hall-sail-into-the-sun-lyric-video/

Which is pretty friggin' awesome. And they did a pretty sweet write up for the whole thing.

Then I dropped a few beer can bombers around the Hall House.

And then I ended this blog post.

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