Moon Bride
"Nobody" & "Keep Calm and Carry On"
Produced by Boy Howdy
Directed by Daniel Rosenberg
Art Director: Zoë Lotus
Assistant Director: Pat Kotula
Costume Design / Hair and Makeup: Victoria Singleton
Post Production: Daniel Rosenberg and Zoë Lotus
Filmed at NODA Art House in Charlotte, NC
Special thanks to Daniel Harp, Tom Taich, and Hannah Glavin for their contributions!
Music by Moon Bride
"NOBODY KNOWS" / "KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON" CREDITS
Carly Kotula: vocals
Phil Hodges: piano, keys, acoustic guitar
Michael Minkoff: drums, percussion
James S. Smith: synths, electric guitar
Adam Higgins: bass guitar, organ
Patrick Smith: electric guitar
“The Dying Pigeons” (Adeline Scully, Amity Minkoff, Sari Smith, Selah Minkoff): vocal
The Pitch Authentically Us
This was not only the debut video for Moon Bride, but the first major project for Boy Howdy. With that in mind it was critical that we didn't hold anything back and wear our heart's on our sleeves.
On Moon Bride's record "Insomnie", "Nobody" & "Keep Calm and Carry On" are sequenced back to back. The contrast they provide each other made for a perfect opportunity to do a double feature. The isolation and melancholy of "Nobody" allows "Keep Calm and Carry On" to feel even more cathartic.
"Nobody" was inspired from the fashion photography shot by Man Ray for Harper's Bazaar.
"Keep Calm and Carry On" pushes us a few decades further and leans into technicolor spectacle, the futurism of Pierre Cardin, and the mad cap musicals of Ken Russell.
Pre Production Storyboarding
The ambitious scope of this project combined with the razor thin budget meant that being meticulous in Pre - production was essential to achieving the very specific vision our team was looking to execute.
This was made possible by Art Director Zoë Lotus' storyboards, which acted as our north star throughout the project.
Makeup and Wardrobe
Working in tandem with Art Director Zoë Lotus, Costume designer and Makeup artist Victoria Singleton was brought on with the brief "Is it possible to do Pierre Cardin on a shoestring budget?" She ran with this and created 9 outfits 6 of which are bespoke for the project. She was able to devise an especially economical solution by creating a series of reversible wool A-Line dresses, as well as utilizing Diamond Quilted Batting to create the extra groovy chrome hero dress.
Studying Stock
With a strong set of references for both "Nobody" and "Keep Calm and Carry On" we were able to prepare LUT's in DaVinci Resolve early in the process to guide the Art Department's choices in color
For "Nobody" we determined our reference was shot on Orthochromatic Film. This is a black and white film stock which does not expose red.
For "Keep Calm and Carry On" a classic technicolor LUT was built to mimic the original film process. In short, this was achieved by converting the Red, Green, and Blue to Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow respectively. This served as a digital approximation of the three strip process which gave technicolor film its gorgeous depth and saturation.
On Location
We found the perfect location in NODA Art House, a production space in Charlotte North Carolina. They were able to provide not just a flexible space but prebuilt sets that fit right in with our needs.
Explore the sets with these 360° images. Shot on the Ricoh Theta S
Photoscans were taken of our hero prop, a mid 60's Zenith Color TV.
Visual Effects Pixel Wranglin'
TOOLS
All of the 31 shots features the usage of visual effects. From cleanup and set extensions to fully CG environments. The entire post production process from ingesting footage to final renders was a brisk 3 months.
See how the project evolved from storyboards, to final renders
See how we transformed a small cyclorama into a neon soundstage
Visual Effects Peek Behind the Curtain
< After Before >
- Beauty clean up
- Set extension and clean up
- Removed excess hot glue tears and treated them to have a glassier look.
- Merging A and B plates
- Beauty clean up
- Rig removal
- Merging A and B plates
- Beauty clean up
- Rig removal
- Adjust fleece blanket on ground to blend with dress
- Merging A, B, C plates
- Beauty clean up
- Set extension utilizing projection mapping on photo - scanned set
- CG carpet utilizing set photography in conjunction with a fur system in Blender.
- Added additional picture frames using in plate frames as well as CG frames using Nuke's scanline render
- Stitched the motion control camera from the end of nobody into the motion control camera in the living room.
- Adjusting camera with using camera projection to push further into television screen.
- Rig Removal
- Integration of CG bushes and roses
- Set extension and DMP integration
- Merging A, B, C plates
- Beauty clean up
- Set extension and rig removal
- TV insert graphics as well as a power/channel light
- Rig Removal
- Tattoo Cleanup
- Mirror Clean up
- Beauty Pass
- Rig Removal and clean up
- Set extension
- Volumetric light
- TV insert
Visual Effects CG Typography
Designed by Zoë Lotus and Daniel Rosenberg using Blender 4.1.
