Oh Yeah Wow: Gotye’s “Easy Way Out”

PUBLISHED by Elliot Blanchard

Oh Yeah Wow has just finished this clever music video for Gotye. Nice mix of live action and stop motion with almost no CG. The shoot was intense — Oh Yeah Wow slept in the bed and ate out of the refrigerator during production.


Director: Darcy Prendergast

Directors of Photography:
Andrew Goldsmith & Jeremy Blode

VFX Director:
Andrew Goldsmith

Animators:
Darcy Prendergast
Seamus Spilsbury

Assistant Animators:
Josh Thomas
Jeremy Blode
Michael Greaney
Sam Lewis
Andrew Goldsmith

Costume:
Paige Prendergast

Lighting:
Shelley Farthing-Dawe
Andrew Goldsmith
Jeremy Blode

Motion Control:
Glenn Anderson

Art Direction:
Darcy Prendergast

Editor & Colourist:
Andrew Goldsmith

Rotoscoping:
Andrew Goldsmith
Josh Thomas

Sound:
Ben Matthews

Model Makers:
Michael Greaney
Josh Thomas
Benjamin Aguesse

Set Builders:
Seamus Spillsbury
David Pennay
Cody Sevedge
Benjamin Aguesse
Wes Starr
Jeremy Blode

Production Manager:
Nicky Pastore

Cardboard Flame Painters:
Fiona Dalwood
Shaun Stares
Nora Juncker
Giulia Sandri
James Bailey

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About the author

Elliot Blanchard

/ www.invisiblelightnetwork.com
Elliot Kealoha Blanchard runs Invisible Light Network, a Brooklyn design studio covering everything from broadcast to interactive and experience projects. He also directs short films, and his previous work has appeared in film festivals around the world.
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5 Comments

Mike Healy

Excellent video!
I like the “CG sux” spray painted on the train towards the end.

Evan Anthony

Oh I really really want to know more about this production. Behind the scenes? Interview? Pretty please :)

Elliot Blanchard

You asked, Motionographer answers.

Oh Yeah Wow was kind enough to provide this interview about the production process. In their own words:

Darcy: Visually, I
wanted to cram in as much visual trickery as possible, without it ever
being front and centre. Im a huge believer of the in camera solution and
have long had an obsession with Stop motion, but the piece really came
into its own when resident Vis FX wizard, Andrew Goldsmith and I started
experimenting.  It wasn’t long before we were creating some pretty
astonishing but deliberately understated animation, some of which we
would often only begin when it was almost off screen . So many of the
elements in the clip, you take for granted- or simply dont see on first
watch. But when you see cockroaches crawling, coffee spilling onto the
plate and the frame burning to white at the end of the clip- you start
to comprehend the sheer amount of work thats gone in and wonder how the
hell these things were actually accomplished. I approached this clip
with only one golden rule: Nothing should be created in a computer. All
of the elements were created in camera, then masterfully assembled by
the wizard. We animated the plasticine blood, the cat, the flames, the
smoke-  all in stop motion with a motion control set up. Andrew then
composited all these elements together. He can now tell you all about
his love for Star Trek re runs…

Andrew: He thinks because I have glasses and love Visual FX that I automatically love sci fi.

Darcy: He does. He secretly wants to marry a Klingon.

Andrew: So anyway. Darcy’s
golden rule may have been broken once or twice, but he is right to say
that we tried to capture everything we possibly could in
camera. Sometimes we had to fake it a little as we didn’t have time for
complex rigs and wires, I often had to paint animators out of frames
which meant we lost shadows and other environmental effects. These are
the few things which had to be digitally reproduced, but the aim was to
keep these so subtle that no one would notice them. I haven’t even told
Darcy about a few of them. 

Darcy: I did notice however, when he tried to surreptitiously composite Patrick Stewart into several scenes.

Andrew: That never happened. The
hardest part for us two creative types was working out the math of
matching the live action footage (played back at 25% speed) with the
stop motion stills, all while spinning 360 degrees every 30
seconds. Once that was sorted, it was a matter of clever masking (after
some clever planning), rotoscoping and occasionally chroma keying.

Darcy:
There were so many times where we were literally working on the
individual elements for 24 hours straight, surviving purely on the
belief of the end goal. Not to mention the compositing time. The set
alone, was a small house. We had lunch in it, we had naps on the bed and
our actual studio fridge was painted grey put in place. We had to build
the various rooms. We furnished them according to colour palette. We
found the toilet in the branches of a friends tree. We completely tiled
the bathroom ourselves without knowing how. We bought over 10,000 sheets
of paper for the office. And after all of that, we burnt it all with a
flamethrower for the final camera pass. 

Andrew: Given
it was such a long gestation period, it was a pretty great way for us
to end it. Its so good to release it into the world…

Darcy: We made it so.

Evan Anthony

Haha this is awesome! I thought I noticed a Spock or two. Fantastic work and thanks so much for telling us a bit more about the process!

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