American Cinematographer - October 2007 - (Page 80)

Short Takes Cut-and-Paste Aesthetic for Switchfoot’s “Awakening” by Iain Stasukevich One of the raw, pre-colorcorrected photos used to create the “photo-mation” effect for the “Awakening” video. Note the time-code cutout at bottom right; these cutouts were used in every photo to ensure that each frame was in sync. fter 10 years of making commercials and music videos, director/cinematographer Brandon Dickerson is accustomed to seeing an idea take on a life of its own. His latest video, for Switchfoot’s “Awakening,” is a good example of how a simple idea can take a radical turn. Dickerson developed the original concept around a process he calls “photo-mation.” The effect involves filming a subject, editing the footage into a sequence, printing out a hard copy of every frame of the edited piece, and then re-photographing those frames to create a new sequence. “Imagine if you took 35mm motion-picture film and printed out every frame as an 81⁄2-by-11 print, and then you had an actor hold each printed frame and re-photographed each frame one by one,” explains Dickerson. “You could take long exposures with an A open shutter in a way you couldn’t do with a motion-picture camera. The result is you have streaks of light that you can only achieve in still photography, but the band’s performance remains in perfect sync.” Using footage from another Switchfoot video, Dickerson shot a series of tests with actor Tony Hale. He pitched the demo to the band, but the label went a different route for the song in question. Six months later, they called Dickerson back and asked if he was still interested in revisiting his concept for “Awakening,” only this time with a nod to the popular video game Guitar Hero. “I wasn’t familiar with the game, but they found it humorous that on tour they were always playing Guitar Hero before playing an actual gig,” Dickerson recalls. “My original idea of holding up one picture and taking a photo and repeating that expanded into this three-dimensional box that was a television, and now each frame of the video had five cutouts [one for each band member] from the original sequence. There was some serious math involved, and thousands of picture scraps to track.” The basic concept focuses on two men [actors Hale and Adam Campbell] who meet in an elevator and then continue on to their separate homes, where they don fake tattoos and eyeliner and play a surreal version of Guitar Hero; the graphics and even the guitar controllers themselves are crafted from cardboard and paper. Before shooting the actors and their parts, Dickerson flew to Toronto to capture the band performing with a Panasonic HVX200. “We shot the band onstage from a variety of angles, some locked-off, some moving, but mostly 80 October 2007 Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Brandon Dickerson.

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - October 2007

American Cinematographer - October 2007 Contents Editor’s Note Letters DVD Playback Production Slate Western Destinies Emotional Betrayal Palace Intrigue Unsafe Passage Short Takes Post Focus New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up

American Cinematographer - October 2007

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.