American Cinematographer - January 2011 - 12

Short Takes
Singer Ben Lovett pilots an airship into a fierce storm in the music video for his song “Eye of the Storm.” Cinematographer Craig Kief utilized bluescreens, black lights and fluorescent tape to isolate key elements of the imagery that would later be combined with CG effects.

Creating an Animated “Eye of the Storm” By Iain Stasukevich

“A couple of years ago, I saw a short animated film by Anthony Lucas called TheMysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello , and it blew me away,” recalls director Christopher Alender. “The animation was done with silhouettes and collage backgrounds, and it got me wondering if I could do the same thing with live action.” Alender put the idea on hold until singer/songwriter Ben Lovett, a close friend, asked him to produce a music video for a song on his album The Fear. When Alender listened to the album, the track “Eye of the Storm” jumped out at him. “It’s like a soundscape with a very cinematic feel,” he observes. Like Jasper Morello, the video for “Eye of the Storm” is set in a steampunk world, a highly technological Victorian society powered
12 January 2011

by steam. The video tells the story of a lonely captain (played by Lovett) battling to keep his airship afloat in the midst of a raging tempest. Alender decided to shoot all of the action against bluescreen, using minimal set pieces and props, and he asked cinematographer Craig Kief, a fellow Florida State University alumnus, to step behind the camera. “Craig is always game when I call him, even when we’re doing something weird,” says Alender. Kief says he was immediately drawn to the images Alender proposed. “A lot of the work I do, mostly commercials and music videos, has extensive visual effects, so this seemed like a natural fit,” says the cinematographer. The visual effects for “Eye of the Storm” called for the creation of the airship and all of the weather effects, and also for picking out specific details in Lovett’s costume and the props. Typically, this would be accomplished by chroma-keying the bluescreen elements of the frame, but Alender intended to shoot 4K with the Red One MX (recording to Red Drives and Compact Flash cards), and he didn’t want the CPU-hogging process to impede the post workflow. “It really slows you down, especially if you’re experimenting and working with high-resolution imagery,” he says. “We worked with the 4K sources but mastered in a 2K comp.” Alender and Kief came up with a way to isolate the elements they wanted to remove by shooting under black lights and using a luma key instead. The idea is based on an RGB image being split into three separate monochrome channels, with each channel containing a separate luma key based on a defined level of exposure. Kief and Alender experimented with different kinds of fluorescent tape and paint until they found the ones that reacted best to ultraviolet light. “Green fluorescent tape was the most powerful, so we used it to build part of the captain’s wardrobe,” says Alender. “Orange

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Photos by Craig Cantey. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Soapbox Films.

American Cinematographer - January 2011

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