American Cinematographer - November, 2010 - 12

Short Takes
Shot and directed by the filmmaking team of Zak Forrest and Chad Liebenguth, the music video for The Deftones’ “Sextape” follows two girls through an aqueous phantasmagoria created with a bevy of in-camera effects.

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Creating an Underwater Dreamscape for “Sextape” By Iain Stasukevich

In the music video for The Deftones’ “Sextape,” two girls cast spells and chase each other through time and space in an aqueous, dreamlike state. The project offered the directing duo of Zak Forrest of Chad Liebenguth the perfect chance to further evolve their experimental, boundaries-pushing style, which they’ve been honing across a string of collaborations, including the recent video for Squarepusher’s “Delta-V.” Answering AC’s questions jointly via e-mail while working on a project in Krakow, Poland, “ZFCL,” as Forrest and Liebenguth call themselves, explain that they operate as a two-man team, with one person shooting and the other lighting, and they constantly rotate duties to keep things fresh. “This allows for a quicker understanding of the action with almost wordless communication, creating a synergy that lets each person develop his own vision with constant input from the other,” they write. The filmmakers’ first instinct with “Sextape” was to shoot in 3-D, but when the single was fast-tracked for European release, the filmmakers found themselves without the necessary time to prep the effects they had envisioned. “It was a complete unknown whether our techniques would have translated [to 3-D],” they say, noting that they have all but shunned CGI in favor of in-camera effects. “We believe the audience knows when it’s not real, even if it looks real. When they see something that truly existed and was photographed, they get a greater sense of excitement.” The duo has worked exclusively with the Red One digital camera since its release in 2007. “We’ve always been impressed with
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the images produced by the [Red One’s] sensor,” they write. “Even as far back as Build 14, while some parties were complaining about the camera’s inconsistencies or aberrations, we were inspired by those same qualities and sought to harness them. Experimenting with different noise levels and dynamic-range values within the same piece accentuates the camera’s high-end qualities and allows one to appreciate the aesthetic uses of its so-called weaknesses.” (For “Sextape,” the duo worked with a Red One fitted with the new Mysterium-X sensor.) The filmmakers tend to design their projects so that each “scene” comprises a single camera setup;once the camera starts rolling, there is almost no downtime, requiring everyone to stay in character until the directors feel that they have everything they need from that scene. “The longer you stay in that world, the better the material gets,” they explain. “Before the Red, we shot on 35mm, and the scene was always at its best right as the film ran out. Even now, we’ll shoot for hours with the Red, and it still feels like the real magic is happening just when the camera finally runs out of juice.” Forrest and Liebenguth recorded in the Red’s 4K setting for normal-speed and time-lapse shots, and in 3K for slow motion. However, some scenes were deliberately processed with a half-standard de-bayer algorithm that inhibited image detail from the camera’s sensor. (Other scenes were processed with Build 16 or Build 30 at both half and full de-bayer, specific to each shot.) “We look at it like choosing different film stocks,” the filmmakers explain. The dreamlike state the two girls enter is depicted as a glittering underwater world crisscrossed with aquatic vegetation; the filmmakers shot the underwater scenes in a 4½'-deep sand-colored swimming pool at a private residence. To shoot underwater with the Red,

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Photos and frame grabs courtesy of the filmmakers.
American Cinematographer - November, 2010

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