Concept Overview

The band Death of an Architect’s song EL-8 and its haunting melodies created a challenge for us to create visuals to accompany the music. We created something that combines visual aesthetics to match the dark acoustic landscapes of their music and act as direction for backup visuals for live shows. We developed multiple concepts for the band to sort through and landed on the concept of humanity’s struggle in finding purpose and penance to nature for our relationship with the environment around us.

Video Synopsis

Crystalline figure is shown in a warehouse environment under a single light atop a small stool. The camera orbits around the figure toggling between wide and macro shots. There is a distinct sense of tension between the figure and his circumstance of being perpetually frozen in time. Indications of movement within the statue show bits “crisping” off. The figure is clearly about to break out; all that is left is the hollow shell of the original chrysalis. This is paired with a parallel scene of a shaman walking slowly forward through a derelict cathedral of sorts.  This is an internal analysis of his conquests and failures — a meditative walk. Overgrown technological vines cascade around him. The camera pans back faster than he walks and reveals a shrine of sorts with a carnivorous plant. He slips gold leaf to the plant before walking off frame, clearly to free himself of the cocoon of the first scenes.

You can watch the video down below.

Technical Development

Early on, we knew there were going to be some technical hurdles that we’d need to either circumvent or blast through. We spent considerable time developing workflows for both the digital and live assets. Band members was 3D scanned and then imported into a library for use in cutaway shots. These files were then used to create the final chrysalis sculpture that would be used in the warehouse scenes. To make the digital scenes feel more real, we knew we’d have to bring a lot of real footage in to the shots to make the audience suspend disbelief.

Production

We combined traditional film techniques with some new methodologies of our own creation to expand a 10′ x 12′ shooting room into a full 150′ x 50′ digital set. This was done with green screen, parabolic walking paths, and set expansion in post to create more depth where there wasn’t any. The virtual set extensions that we created were used to composite the live action into scenes as well. The digital assets, such as the chrysalis in the first shots were sculpted and optimized for rendering to speed up production. After rendering, compositing, rerendering, and post production, it was time to edit everything together for the final cut.

CCD Roles:

Story and Script

Production Design

Storyboarding

Styling Research

CGI

Direction and Cinematography

Editing

Producing