Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1151096
www.postmagazine.com 27 POST JULY/AUG 2019 MUSIC VIDEOS TIMBER GETS STEAMY FOR SHAWN MENDES/CAMILA CABELLO SEÑORITA VIDEO SANTA MONICA, CA — Creative studio Timber (www.timber. net) recently helped heat things up between recording artists Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello in their new music video, Señorita for Island Records. The team at Timber, lead by creative directors/partners Jonah Hall and Kevin Lau, worked closely with director Dave Meyers and production company Freenjoy to complete all VFX and post production for the vid- eo — a whimsical love story with a playful tone that showcases Mendes and Cabello in intimate montages and dynamical- ly-stylized backdrops. "Director Dave Meyers really wanted to base it all on the idea of a fashion shoot," explains Lau. "Most of the references we were all looking at was fashion photography for print. The overall tone of the music video was to be lush and cinematic to create a beautiful foundation for onscreen romance." The production was mostly shot on the Alexa LF to get the desired range and achieve the cinematic fashion nature of the photography, and the Panasonic LT s35 for low-light situations. From there, the files moved into post, following a fairly traditional digital workflow. "As the video was being shot, the DIT would be offloading and transcoding files on-set," says Lau. Because of the original, super-condensed eight-day schedule, editor Alyssa Oh was requested on-set. From there, she started "piecing things together as soon as scenes were wrapped," says Lau. Due to final approvals, the schedule was extended by about a week which, Lau says "was nice but still a bit condensed. "With the current digital workflows, we have the luxury of getting a jump on the post production before they even wrap camera. Once the shoot was wrapped, full-resolution drives were sent to Timber and to Company 3, who handled the telecine." The video was cut on an Avid at Rock Paper Scissors by Oh, while color was handled by Stefan Sonnenfeld at Company 3 on Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve. Timber provided creative direction, set supervision, design, post, visual effects and finishing. "We always try to jam a lot of ideas into a short amount of time, but that's what makes them fun too," adds Lau. "Music videos are one of the last really creative mediums where you get to experiment more than with a commercial project. In the end, the music video looks amazing and got over 100 million views in the first week, so we're glad it got the extra time to really polish it up." — By Linda Romanello GASKET SHOWS ELTON JOHN LOVE ON LATEST PROJECT MINNEAPOLIS, MN — Gasket (https://gasket.tv) was recently called on by LA-based We Are Hear to create animation for the music video (I'm Gonna) Love Me Again, which comes from the Elton John biopic feature film, Rocketman. The studio worked with director Kii Arens to bring to life several poster designs Arens created, based on Elton John's iconic performances and imagery, including shows at The Spectrum in Philadelphia, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and Madison Square Garden in New York City. They were encouraged to embrace a '60s and '70s psychedelic aesthetic. In addition to the animated sequences, Gasket was responsi- ble for tracking and compositing screens onto several vintage TVs shot specifically for the video. The studio also keyed and rotoscoped several shots of the film's star, Taron Egerton, in full Elton John attire, for placement within the edit. Gasket employed custom-built PC workstations, as well as MacBook Pros to complete the job. The studio's creative software includes Adobe Creative Cloud, and specifically After Effects CC 2019 and Photoshop CC 2019 for this project. Autodesk Maya 2018 was used for animation, and Flame 2019 was used for compositing and finishing.