Post Magazine

July/August 2020

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MUSIC VIDEOS www.postmagazine.com 19 POST JULY/AUG 2020 Sekou Andrews & The String Theory — Love Says VENICE, CA — Akkurat Studios and Optimist recent- ly produced a new spoken word short featuring poet Sekou Andrews & The String Theory. Love Says was shot by Maz Makhani, with Mischa Meyer of Spot Welders (www.spotwelders.com) in Venice serving as both direc- tor and editor. The project marks the third single and video from Andrews' Grammy-nominated album "Sekou Andrews & The String Theory", and centers around a powerful poem about the double-edged relationship between love and hate, and the need for the fight for freedom, justice and equality to be anchored in love. Optimist Inc. and Akkurat Studios partnered on pro- duction, and California Music's Kristian Nord and Malte Hagemeister teamed with The String Theory's PC Nackt, Ben Lauer and Sebastian Gäbel. "It all started when Sekou and The String Theory re- corded a song and a video in our studios last year," notes Toygar Bazarkaya, creative director of Optimist. "After hearing the powerful words of 'Love Says', we knew we had to focus on exactly that — the words. Any film had to move aside and leave Sekou the stage to express them. It's an exercise in restraint that left us with the words and the artist, literally." In the black & white video, Andrews recites the poem, as bold white lyrics and quotes are called out and pro- jected onto his body, others and background objects. According to Meyer, the video was shot in March, but the topics have been pressing for decades. "But now we're really seeing that people have had enough with the injustice," notes the director. "We aspire for this piece to give people some guidance in where to look for answers and the hope that love conquers all." California Music's Hagemeister says the song was recorded a year ago, but the video was captured the day before a lockdown blanketed Los Angeles. "When George Floyd was killed and the streets were full of 'I Can't Breathe' signs, we knew we had to finish it immediately," says Hagemeister. The project was shot using Sony's Venice camera, equipped with Leica M0.8 lenses. Meyer cut the 4:47 video using Avid's Media Composer. Shipping + Handling (www.shippingandhandling.tv) in Venice provided VFX services, with Jerry Spivack serving as compositor. pull the band through a space portal and into another galaxy. Abyss begins very much like an in-stu- dio video, with the band performing on an all-white soundstage. As they play, energy is released and a portal develops in the back- ground, ultimately growing larger in size until it's able to pull each performer through the hole and into outer space. The video was directed by Rod Scobie (roderickscobie.com), who has collaborated with the band on several music videos in the past, including Awakening and Northwest Passage. For this project, Scobie replaced the original director, coming onboard just five days before production was scheduled to be- gin. He wore many hats, including director of photography, editor and visual effects super- visor, helping the project make its scheduled release date of June 18th. According to the director, the concept of beginning on a stage and then being pulled through a space portal was already in place when he got involved, but certain nuances of the storyline still needed to be determined. Would the band end up on a planet? Would they be floating in space? This all needed to be worked out. The video was shot at Stage 6 in Vancouver, which provided both the white cyclorama set and room to hang green screens for the video's visual effect sequenc- es. Scobie shot the band in 4K using his own Blackmagic Design Pocket Cinema Camera. He also edited the piece using Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve. Visual effects were created by Frame Lab Studios (http://framelabstudios.com), which used Foundry's Nuke for compositing and SynthEyes for tracking. Some of the nebulas used to establish the outer-space environment were created by one of Scobie's friends using SideFX Houdini. Additional matte paintings were acquired through Pixabay, an online resource that of- fers royalty-free images. The video was shot on May 30th and posted over a two-and-a-half-week period, ultimately debuting on Napalm Records' YouTube channel on June 18th. It was edited and delivered in high definition, and runs sev- en minutes in length. Unleash The Archers' Abyss debuted in June. Frame Lab Studios created the VFX in Abyss.

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