PRODUCER / ASSISTANT DIRECTOR / COMPOSITING / TITLES

Perhaps my new favorite credit sequence I've done for a Joe Baughman video (possibly beating out the Right Time end credits). Joe devised the video concept well before Stranger Things was released on Netflix, but now it looks like a direct rip off. He actually conceived it for a different Caveman song; then they wanted us to keep the concept but use it for a second song; then once the label saw the finalized video, Joe was asked to re-edit it to a third song. Unfortunately, of the three songs, "The State of Mind" is the weakest fit (although I personally enjoy the song itself the most). It was really fun seeing it edited to the second song "Life or Just Living". Although that pairing seems near impossible (such an upbeat song with such dark subject matter), it worked really well as an homage to the "R-rated horror movies with kids" of the 80's (curse you, Stranger Things for stealing our retro concept and being so much more successful!)--particularly with the wonderful little synthesizer hook in the song.

Random Notes:

• Much of my compositing time was spent lengthening the vomit streams. As it turns out, just spitting out what fits in one's mouth doesn't look like much. So we filmed our vomit concoction being dumped out of a cup, and I cut it out from the background and inserted it after the initial "spew" that our actor, Miah, did with his mouth. And then of course, outside of compositing the wonderful claymation figures, I spent a lot of time on the final shot of the "eye blast" that is frozen prior to the credits. 
• Joe gave me carte blanche with the end credits. I had just, for the first time, watched the horror classic Sleepaway Camp, and was blown away by the ending shot, which segued into the credits with a grimy sort of solarizing effect that looked super 80's (if you're feeling daring you can find the extremely NSFW ending/credit sequence on Youtube--but if you're a horror fan, you should really just watch the entire movie because it has maybe the most insane ending of any horror movie I've ever seen--found, in its entirety, legally on YouTube for free here). So needless to say, this was my inspiration for the credit sequence. So I spent a lot of time adding the appropriate pulpy, graininess and shaky look to the end credits that fits my memory of the scary films of the time found on VHS--the degraded nature of the format adding to the seedy illicitness of these nasty little flicks. I also looked to the great, much less explicit 80s Canadian horror film The Changeling for their aesthetic, though there's a much less conspicuous similarity.