Want to be on Motionographer? Submit your work now!

Get a daily digest of Motionographer's posts in your inbox. Subscribe now.

New U2 video pieced together nicely

u2.jpg

Check out this second video for U2’s “Window in the Skies”, directed by Jonas Odell via Nexus Productions in London and pieced together along with the crew at Filmteknarna in Stockholm. The images were scanned in from the new “U2 on U2″ book, cut up and pieced together to create this incredibly dynamic 3D journey. I knew as soon as this piece started I was going to like it because I was ready and willing to sit through a U2 video…

Thanks to Seth for passing on the video and information!

Posted on 11 January 2007 by John
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)

RSS feed

20 Comments »

Comment by nick
2007-01-11 20:39:33

great piece

 
Comment by Joe Clay
2007-01-11 23:41:11

What an excellent job they did with that video! It’s particularly relevant to me as I’m about to embark toward a similar style.

 
Comment by Lilian
2007-01-12 00:21:32

Would like to know more details about how this was pieced together..what’s involved, and so on…any takers?

 
Comment by jon
2007-01-12 00:27:11

i kinda like the video that the mill did for that song more

 
Comment by anonymouse
2007-01-12 07:22:37

ugh. u2

 
Comment by anonymouse
2007-01-12 07:33:12

“Would like to know more details about how this was pieced together..what’s involved, and so on…any takers?”

usually involves building rough 3d geometry of your photo, projecting the photo onto said geometry, do your camera move, and then fix up those places where the texture smears or where you manually have to fill in background information that wasnt in the original photograph.

whole video reminds me of gondrys rolling stone video. just… cleaner and soulless. probably just cause i hate bono

 
Comment by ChicO
2007-01-12 09:43:02

While i like the beginning i thought the rest was rather ugly & flat. Windows flying through space, eh?

 
Comment by Joe Clay
2007-01-12 09:56:17

Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but a lot of it could have been done in a program such as After Effects using 3D layers. A lot of photos can be faked into looking 3D fairly easily (I’ve seen it done on A&E). There’s a section (1:20-1:28) that they cut people from the backgrounds, and instead of patching the backround back together with photoshop, they lit the layers as if the cut out was the shadow. A lot of that was genious. I especially like the way the reflections in the water were handled. It looks as if they duplicated the layer, gave it a negative x-scale value and put the image containing the water between the two layers with the water knocked out (look at 2:28). That’s how I would have done it, but of course there are many, many ways to accomplish it.

 
Comment by Joe Clay
2007-01-12 09:58:37

Oops. I meant a negative y-scale value. Sorry!

 
Comment by Yussef
2007-01-12 13:39:30

how inaccurate! and you call yourself a motionographer poster! :)

 
Comment by Rich
2007-01-12 14:31:29

Love it except for the fact that it has so soul. I was bored by the end. Still though, amazing camera move.

 
Comment by nynex
2007-01-12 16:23:31

You guys must be jaded. That video is amazing. I couldnt imagine how long it took. I guess U2 does have the funds to hire 100 or so people to cutout images of them and their album covers.

Anyways great video it deserves to be seen.

 
Comment by kmfix
2007-01-12 16:38:48

I really liked this piece.

As for my guess on how it was done would be a combination of AE and a 3d program… As some of the elements do have depth and aren’t flat. Personally I would have done it all in C4D as it would be very quick for me to compose the scenes and make adjustments fairly fast… I bet all the roto took the longest…

 
Comment by Joe Clay
2007-01-12 21:16:11

It probably was some true 3D, but I do think it could have been accomplished without any 3D modeling. :)

 
Comment by Lilian
2007-01-13 01:11:15

I agree with Joe Clay..its amazing what one can do JUST with AE..in fact I’d be EVEN more intrigued to find the logistics of the project IF ITS ENTIRELY BUILT in AFter Effects with layering and 3d camera..But what I’m interested to know is the scope on the whole…i.e. time vs budget constrains vs this vs that, what was the decision made with regards to how much of it was 3d and how much of it was 2D..

For some reason what ‘anonymouse’ said seems to make more sense cuz then you can do a rough playblast and make sure the movement etc are all smooth before you start patching it up and glossing it over.

 
 
Comment by L3nZ
2007-01-15 13:12:58

great video, great song, great band.

 
Comment by Jenna H
2007-01-19 10:17:31

I hear it was done in 4weeks.
working day and night with a team of 8 and done in AFX.
Budget was very low. as always with musicvideos.

 
Comment by Mr. M
2007-01-19 14:45:28

The video was entirely built in AE with 3D layers, no real 3D involved.

 
Comment by John
2007-01-19 15:38:27

I emailed a list of all your questions to Jonas, so we’ll figure this mystery out soon

 

You must be logged in to post a comment.