Hasta La Motion!

Directing Duo : Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan aka DANIELS, just released a music video for an FM Belfast track titled Underwear.

“And all you need to make a music video are some friends and $40 of thrift store clothing.”

It features people dancing alone, sometimes in their underwear, sometimes a bit ugly, yet always confident. A very clever edit, the video plays with variable speeds and retiming to create a creepy feeling, along with several clever tricks including time displacement, match cuts, and puppeteering underwear. We asked the directing duo to do a Q&A, and they sent over this pretty funny interview with themselves.

Also provided is a behind the scenes video, be sure to check it out.

Daniel and Daniel from DANIELS got a chance to sit down with DANIELS:
Daniel 1 – Hi Daniel.
Daniel 2 – Hi Daniel. Daniel is a big motionographer fan folks.
Daniel 1 – I think I’ve visited it every day for the past three years. Honestly I learn more from this website than I ever did in school.
Daniel 2 – And then I learned everything from you, so it’s kindof like motionographer was teaching me all along!
Daniel 1 – And now, readers out there, we are teaching you.
Daniel 2 – Let’s get started! What was production like?
Daniel 1 – I felt like I was helping a friend out on a high school video project for Spanish class. We used to shoot really late in the night cause we had no other time to do it and we really didn’t know what we wanted, so we just had fun with it.
Daniel 2 – That’s a perfect metaphor because we all spoke Espagnol on set.
Daniel 1 – Por supuesto… I think that’s Spanish… But really it was like, you (director 1), me (director 2), our friend doug (camera), and some other random person who wanted to dance. And thats how it was all 5 nights of shooting…
Daniel 2 – We had the freedom to not focus on the effects. But rather on the actors. I didn’t want dancers. I wanted to have characters that were dancing.
Daniel 1 – And most importantly, we wanted people who didn’t mind being ugly. I feel like the media world has perfected pretty, right?
Daniel 2 – Too bad that asian guy was so pretty. He ruined the aesthetic.
Daniel 1 – I will admit that is the one flaw I see in the video. But what I was trying to say, is that there isn’t much you can do with pretty anymore, especially with dancers.
Daniel 2 – Folks, Daniel IS THE PRETTY ASIAN GUY! Just wanted to clarify.
Daniel 1 – So we decided to go the opposite route and make normal people dance as terribly as possible, and make them look like horrendous messes.
Daniel 2 – Speaking of messes, tell us about the effects work you did.
Daniel 1 – All I know is that we had vague ideas of what effects we wanted to do on each character, and then we took a full month to-
Daniel 2 – SURE SURE. But how did you do those amazing particle effects!
Daniel 1 – We took one of your dusty shoes and an old copy of “The Godfather” and smacked them til dust came out. And then we took that footage and overlayed it on top.
Daniel 2 – Wow, that’s disappointing.
Daniel 1 – But wait, theres more of that to come!
Daniel 2 – Disappointment galore! Let me talk about the taffy effect on the bar guy. So I learned a lot about that effect after I did it. It’s called Slit-Scan Photography and it’s been around since the 60s. There are java scripts and plug-ins to do this effect. But if you want to do it DANIELS style, you slow your footage down, break the image into 359 layers, and then make each layer slightly slower than the next.
Daniel 1 – amateur
Daniel 2 – How did you do that clothes thing?!
Daniel 1 – Oh, that’s the only way I know how to change my clothes.
Daniel 2 – That’s where I came up with the idea. I saw you humping your clothes off at a party.
Daniel 1 – Anyways. its really just a bunch of well timed edits. I did the same exact action twice, once with clothes on, and once with clothes off, stapled to the wall. And then SLAM, you can be just like me.
Daniel 2 – That should be the title of this interview.
Daniel 1 – And the underwear humping into the wall is a reversed shot of boxers being tugged off by fishing line.
Daniel 2 – So the moral of the story is… Flip flops are good particle generators…
Daniel 1 – We dont actually know any Spanish…
Daniel 2 – And all you need to make a music video are some friends and $40 of thrift store clothing.
Daniel 1 – The friends was probably the most expensive part.
Daniel 2 – Because now we have no friends.
Daniel 1 & Daniel 2 (in unison) – And friends are priceless.

Directors/Editors/FX: Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan
DP: Doug Burgdorff
Dancers: Ani Raya-Flores, Daniel Scheinert, James Mackey, Daniel Kwan, and Marilyn Heidecker

Posted on Motionographer

BBGUN’s (Maxim Bohichik & Alex Bergman) “Vision Vision” video for Loyal Divide is yet another in-camera act of simplicity.

Making its debut at the Booze, Vids and Banter event in NYC a couple weeks ago, this entertaining little piece is no more than black suits, white gaffer tape, quirky choreography and war. Enjoy!

Posted on Motionographer

As of less than an hour ago, every form of industry chatter has been focused on one thing: the end of Boards Mag. It has been confirmed that the 10 year run of one of the leading mags on commercial production has come to an end.

The amazing editorial crew of Rae-Ann Fera, Ed White, Kevin Ritchie and Christine Clarke consistently elevated the creative dialogue from their in-depth writing to their global events — and we’re all better off for it.

As friends of Motionographer, we’ve been humbled by their continuous support. We’ll all be waiting in anticipation to see where you land next. Until then, take a breath and have some drinks for us in Toronto tonight!

Statement from Boards:

It is with sadness that we inform you that Boards magazine has ceased publishing immediately. Established in 1999, Boards rapidly evolved into one of the world’s most respected media brands serving the international advertising and commercial production community. Over the years we’ve built a legacy of cutting-edge journalism that helped to unite a disparate market with unflinching perspective and insight.

Each month we took the pulse of the industry and pointed the way towards new opportunities for our entrepreneurial readership. There wasn’t a single moment that we didn’t consider how our efforts might contribute to a better industry for all. Through that lens, we hope we made a difference.

Major long-term trends over the past several years have forced our clients to re-evaluate their business models and the recent global economic turmoil has simply accelerated that need. This process will take many years to unfold but, ultimately, this business will thrive once again in a new form by harnessing the sheer creative force from which it was born.

It has been a pleasure to serve you all of these years. We thank you for your undying support, all of the good times we’ve shared and, most of all, wish you much success as you tackle this brave new world.

Posted on Motionographer

The new GEL 2010 opener and introductory titles by Thornberg & Forester are just delightful. This is the kind of project that looks like it was a lot of fun to make! Of course, we know that there was a lot of hard work, good thinking and careful planning that went into the project, but somehow it looks so effortless that it just seems inevitable. We talked to Justin Meredith and Scott Matz of T&F to find out more about this project.

Read more…
(Oh and thanks to Jeffrey Welk for the tip!)

Posted on Motionographer

RECURSION is a new film that comes from Russia-based director Maxim Zhestkov.

His films exude the quality you would expect from a world-class studio but with a certain trace of characteristic that only an artist could produce.

And this time is no exception: elegant, simple and beautiful.

Q&A with Maxim Zhestkov

Posted on Motionographer