Wax Tailor feat Aloe Blacc- Time To Go from Oh Yeah Wow on Vimeo.

Oh Yeah Wow strikes again as masters of rough finesse. It is nice to see work that shows arduous craftsmanship yet can keep the feeling of raw, spontaneous electricity, like they do. The overall animation is so strong that even the abrupt natural lighting changes impart a graceful tempo like the warm flicker of old film. If you haven’t already seen it, check out another outdoors industrial masterpiece from Oh Yeah Wow, ‘Rippled.’ And read on to hear from the ever-entertaining Director, Darcy Prendergast.


Tell us about the production.

    2 cameras. 3.5 months. 6 days a week. 12 hour days + planning for the next. That was our life. Both Co-director Seamus Spilsbury and I basically just kept telling lies to our girlfriends: “It’ll all be over soon”. It wasn’t. 

    We’ve had longer productions- our clip for Gotye was in the works for 9 months for example but this was definitely the most grueling. Wake up at 6am, pack the cars with the necessary rigs, generators, camera gear and food—drive to the location, animate until dark- head back to the studio—unpack, download/ render/ review and backup the shot, then plan for the next day. The cost of creating a bit of on screen magic. We’ve got a lot of accumulated experience now between us- and despite, you know- making a giant crochet quadropus fly through the street in uncontrolled lighting conditions being a logistical nightmare—we executed it with militaristic precision… Which is really in stark contrast to the way things usually operate here at Oh Yeah Wow.

What was your equipment?

    Canon 5D Mark II; Motion Control Rig- custom built 4 motor set up… Focal, tilt, twist, track; Dragonframe; Generator and some rigging.

Recount some challenges you overcame.

    Apart from actually animating a large scale airborne creature in the real world?

    The project actually proved to be most daunting in the post production phase- which we initially didn’t anticipate. A time lapsed quadropus moving through a variety of locations with heavy duty rigging supporting his weight. Clean plates were useless due to the ever changing lighting conditions of the respective environments. Under pressing deadlines, the solution was neither elegant or efficient…. but hell! It worked in the end.

    Almost every frame of the music video had to be painstakingly finessed. To erase the rigs holding all the stopmotion elements, missing information was manipulated and taken from the nearest surrounding frames to retain the ephemeral light movement of the scenes. This was done for almost 50 shots in total. There was some serious digital wizardry going on.

 
What is your favorite Dragonframe feature?

    Ergh! Where to start. It’s like laughter to a comedian. I’ve got to say the motion control controls. Ha! I liked how uncomplicated it was- even for those who aren’t particularly tech savvy like me.

– Thank you Darcy, good infield legwork with that Quadropus!

Animators:

Sam Lewis

Mike Greaney

Seamus Spilsbury

 Darcy Prendergast

VFX supervisor:

Josh Thomas

Assistant animators:

Alexandra Calisto de Carvalho

Joel Williams

Compositors:

Josh Thomas
Jeremy Blode

James Bailey
Alexandra Calisto de Carvalho

Keith Crawford
Dan Steen

Crotchet sculptor
:

Julie Ramsden

Color grade:

Crayon

Special thanks to:

Jess Mew

Tarsh Dickensen

Adrian Faber

Chani Caulfield