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MUSIC VIDEOS www.postmagazine.com 21 POST JULY/AUG 2025 THE WHITE STRIPES - RED RAIN The White Stripes' new video for Red Rain was visualized through the use of stop-motion animation. The track is off the band's fifth studio album, "Get Behind Me Satan," which dates back to 2005 and is being commemorated with a limited vinyl release. For the Red Rain music video, the label called on stop-motion director Conor Callahan. "I have been making stop-motion music videos for local bands for years," Callahan shares. "I had pitched for some Sony projects in the past, and then this one came along and happened to be the right fit. As a life-long White Stripes fan, it was a dream come true." In the Red Rain music video, red rain falls from soft, gray, cotton clouds, fill- ing up a bird bath, from which a group of wooly-textured pigeons drink. Small plastic action-figure versions of singer/guitarist Jack White and drummer Meg White perform as the precipitation comes down. The red, black and white color palette is reinforced with spinning peppermint lollipops that lighten the dark mood while staying on-brand. Ultimately, one bird lays an egg, which hatches to reveal a rich red chick — clearly a product of the environment. According to Callahan, the video took just under a month to produce, with roughly a week spent on pre-production and planning. Two weeks were spent on fabricating elements, such as the soft pigeons, backgrounds and lollipops. Then, Be Electric in Brooklyn hosted the three-day shoot, with Callahan per- forming additional animation from his home studio. Post production included a week of visual effects, editing and color grading. The band's figures were created by Super7 and tie in with the 20th anniver- sary of the "Get Behind Me Satan" release. "The kind folks over at Sony and Super7 gave us early access to them for the video," Callahan says of the figures. "We had many pairs of them to test, melt and retrofit as needed. The plastic is quite mendable after heating. We applied heat with a heat gun to position their arms to hold lollipops. The lollipops were made out of Sculpey clay." Callahan estimates that he was able to produce between :11 and :30 of ani- mation each day, "We shot on the Canon 5D Mark IV," he shares. "We had two of them handy for multi-cam setups. This helped multiply our footage and reduce anima- tion time. Both cameras were shooting 4K, full frame. We ran them through the stop-motion program Dragonframe. Dragonframe helps us micro adjust camera settings, animate focus pulls and, most importantly, toggle between frames to assist a smooth animation workflow. We shot most everything at 12 frames a second." For the lightning effect, the team put Aputure MCs in the clouds, and DP Shamus Lobene created custom, animated gobos that were cut into the shape of lightning and put through a projection attachment. "These can be seen most vividly on the close ups of the white birds and apple, but appear throughout the video," Callahan reveals. The backdrop and mountains were painted by Nicolette Sloan, and were inspired by the backdrop painting of the animated series Ren & Stimpy. The birds were hand needle-felted by Callahan, Sofia Tardif and Cole Jordan. The skeletons were created from armature wire and epoxy putty, and the feet were sculpted out of Sugru. The brick wall was created by Brian Hodge and held together with icing, which served as a mortar substitute. All of the water was made from resin, including the liquid in the bird bath. Rain clouds were made from a poly-cotton blend and then soaked in wa- tered-down gray paint. The lightning bolts were cut from thin brass sheets. VFX included removing the tie downs and moving cloud components. The rain was randomized using Adobe After Effects. AE was also used to create a loop of the bird's movement. – By Marc Loftus THE ANTI GROUPIES - I CAN'T Four-piece, all-female rock band The Anti Groupies recently released a new music video for their track, I Can't. The project was directed by Dylan Gianella (dylensphotos.com), who shot the video at the Huntington Beach record shop, Vinyl Solution. Gianella, who also collaborated with the band on their Read the Room and Cigarette Slut music videos, served as DP on the project, capturing footage of the band performing with their instruments in some scenes, and aggressively dancing in others. I Can't was shot using Sony's FX3, and the camera remained fixed for much of the shoot, with only slight zooms breaking up the perspective. "The shoot took about three hours total," says Gianella. "When we first got there, we had the help of the employees to move some shelving around to be able to fit the drums, and give space for the band to move around freely and perform. Once setup, it was pretty smooth from there, doing multiple takes of the song while the Anti Groupies did different actions in-frame." The video came together in Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve, with Gianella performing the edit himself. "Overall, this was a really fun project to be a part of," says the filmmaker of the collaboration. – By Marc Loftus