On 5/13 an epic new video was released - Dead Animal Assembly Plant's "A Violent Breed".
This is the third collaboration with DAAP - and I think our best work yet. Our first video, "Rise with me" exploded when it came out. It turned heads and raised both DAAP's profile and HotKarlProduction's. For over a year it was the video that everyone referenced.
Now that's gonna change. I can feel it. I think people are gonna be talking about "A Violent Breed" like they did with "Rise With Me". Let's watch it and then we can explore how it was made:
So yeah, pretty badass. It took alot of work to make it happen.
Zach, Rebecca, and the others spent time prepping and making the costumes. It's no small feat. The had to make two Ancient Ones costumes and find the prosthetics. They have to make the TV mask and mob outfits. They tapped Zach Smith for creature makeup, find actors, find a location, and work with me on ideas. Not easy!
Every video has a few moments where it looks like everything is going to fall apart. Sometimes they do. But you just move forward and pick up the pieces. If you do it will come together better than you expected. It's basically par for the course.
This video's big snag was the location. The original location we were going to film at was Shaniko. The weekend that worked for everyone happened to be "Shaniko Days" - a celebration of Shaniko's glory days. Shaniko is a "ghost town" in central-ish Oregon and normally has a population of like 5. Hundreds of people now were in Shaniko. Not exactly the type of people who look at the band and say "Fuck yeah!".
So yeah, our location went bust. And we found this out the night before. :X
PANIC was starting to set (more like anxiety boiling over) but I've been through this so many times. We talked to everyone and after a few hours had a new plan. We'd hit Friend, OR and visit the public school house and film there. Our plan was to drive out the night before and camp out. So that's what we did.
After a 2.5-3 hour drive we ended up parking at the Public School House - a beautiful turn of the century reminder of a past era. I slept in the VW Atlas with my film gear and generator. The generator made it not comfy. The band and others slept in vehicles or tents.
Then we're up! Pretty much right away it started getting HOT and then the damn bees/hornets came out. Everyone had to get ready with those things flying around threatening.
The band's makeup process takes about 2 hours. Well worth the time but the flying monsters threatened attacks constantly.
The creature makeup? That took much longer but damn it's SO COOL!!
Zach Smith applying makeup to Josh:
And to Kendra.
We took this pic when we were done but hey, scope it out now!
We started with band footage - filming individual people as they were ready to go. I believe we started with bass and then hit drums.
Here's a few stills from the bass. This stomp was filmed in slow mo so we could get that dust floating in the sunlight. For these individual shots I filmed all the performances hand held.
This was Nick's first music video. He CRUSHED IT. This was from his first take.
We got some shots of Mr Jesse Hex going ham on this amazing piano. I used some haze/atmosphere to give it some texture.
That piano is BEAUTIFUL. Ever since watching Cradle of Filth's "From the Cradle to Enslave" on Iron Mike's metal videos (public access back in the day!) I'd wanted to pay homage to some of the piano shots. CHECK.
And SKORN ON DRUMS! Jason is a fucking badass and hits like a madman.
I also got drone footage of the surrounding area. I love this windmill.
Finally on to some damn vocals!
Rebecca is such a badass! She rocked the fuck out on a table.
We some of that old classic walking down the road while being a badass.
And after a few takes of everyone individually we move on the the group stuff!! We thought it would be awesome to have our Ancient Ones hanging out behind SKORN.
I used my SLR Magic 1.33 Anamorphic lens on these group shots - that's why the video is at a 2.33 aspect ratio instead of 16:9. The group shots were also similar to this setup:
They were filmed on a 8ft crane. It's kinda difficult to use with a one man crew (Freddy was in New York).
Using Blackmagic Design stuff all over the place.
At this point we started ripping through the story footage - it always takes longer than you expect and some shots were brutal - 10 minute changes for a 15 second clip.
I remember realizing I wanted shots of Zach outside so we got a few takes outside with the Ancient Ones creeping and hanging out behind him. The sky looked so cool we did two takes and then got Nick to do a take as well. We were SPENT so I didn't ask the others.
So dope:
The big unknown for me going into this was how I'd handle the TV mask footage. I *knew* I could do it but hadn't actually done it. I told them "yeah, sure, no problem". Ha.
The sheet kept falling and we didn't have tracking markers on it (doh!) but I made it work. I used Red Giant's Kingpin plug in. The key wasn't great so I just masked it out instead of chroma keying it out. That led to all sorts of fun rotoscoping on some of the more complicated shots.
Thankfully everything worked out.
Let's look at how the shot above is put together.
I have a video of static. I masked/cut it overlay on the TV. This is the base TV image I used for all the shots.
This is what it looks like resized and fitted with King Pin Tracker.
This is how it tracks the TV.
But no.............it fits and moves properly but the static covers the executioner's face.
So then I had to mask it out and key frame it. Had the green screen worked it would have saved so much time.
And some of the scenes with multiple videos - this is what the timeline can look like:
So the VFX went fairly smooth once I upgraded my video card. My previous one was dying using the Red Giant plugins.
Our actors were awesome and really had to deal with some nasty heat, lack of sleep, somewhat crazy outfits, and more. And they were so enthusiastic the entire time! Good energy is contagious.
They even put their heads on the chopping block for us!
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