Dog Walker: Colour Keys & Set-Fabricating

After the story stage was finished (boards drawn up, leica reel timed out), it was time to move on to colour-planning and set-maken. I started with a colour palette:

Not all these colours were used in the final film - it was fairly monochromatically blue with a few intentional pops of colour - but it served a guideline for the colour choices that I made throughout the fabrication stage. 

Next up were colour keys for major scenes. I broke up colours into a few different segments: the story takes place over the course of a sunny, wintry day, and each time the video cuts back from the chorus kaleidoscope segment it's to a slightly later hour and period of light. Breaking up the colours this way was also helpful when it came to lighting scenes - I knew roughly what I was aiming for concerning segments of scenes, and how gradual or stark to make those lighting differences. In some cases I pushed it more during the actual shoot - the yellow sky backdrop comes in earlier than initially laid out in the colour keys, and the final scenes are lit darker than in their depiction here. 

Some early set-up tests - playing with the rig, figuring out sizes for hills and vales and fences in comparison to the puppet's scale, and how much room I had for panning abilities, with keeping the size and edges of the sky (a handy bed-sheet) in consideration. 

Set-pieces, gettin' the beauty treatment. Salt!

Cardboard tree backgrounds, referenced from the earlier maquette style exploration.

Finished set-pieces, fences, telephones, church - more on the church next time!

The Most Loyal: Dog Walker

Dog Walker - The Most Loyals from Carla Veldman on Vimeo.

Sooo this was finished two weeks ago and it had a lovely premiere at the band's album release party last night. I had a wonderful experience crafting this music video over the last few months, and The Most Loyal were amazing to work with. Special thanks: The Most Loyal, Andy Veldman, Fraser Goulding & Display Arts of Toronto, Nicole Breedyk, Aparajita Ravichandran, Lisa Wilson, Jen Quevedo, Chris Walsh, Aldines Zapparoli, and Kevin Parry.

More behind-the-scenes to come over the next few weeks!

p.s. fullscreen-it or go to vimeo to watch this in all its glorious HD beauty.

The Most Loyal album release party!

HEY! The music video/recent stop-mo project I've been working on will be premiering at the album release party tomorrow night in Toronto at Clinton's (693 Bloor Street West, 9pm, cover is $7). If you're in the area, come on out!

More info to be found on facebook!

Fabricating Trees!

A little behind-the-scenes on steel tree fabrication:

I made the trees from a combination of brass soldering rods (for the trunks) and steel wire for branches. The wire came painted black, but I didn't want any other coating because it would require burning/melting that off first in order to make a clean joint, which would be a nuisance. I drew designs, snipped pieces, laid everything out, taped pieces in place.

I brought these home, invested in a brazing kit from Home Hardware, and learned how to braze from my dad. I opted for brazing with these because it was sturdy and relatively quick. Gluing wouldn't have a strong enough bond and would take up drying time, and the steel was too thick for soldering. 

The brazing held up pretty well. There were two or three branches that broke in transition - sometimes the solder didn't spread between the joints too well - it would bubble up (a heating/timing issue I suspect), and these were more prone to snapping off. Other pieces were too small and close together so that when I heated one piece, the solder on surrounding pieces would melt and branches would fall off. I was pretty ambitious with the designs, so some of the tree branches required gluing - these were mostly the pine trees. 

So I made a tree! And then I made 30 more. 

After the trees were brazed, they got a coat of grey auto primer to make for a better painting surface, a paint job in acrylic, followed by a good dose of spray glue and salt. 

Thank you to Andrew Patten and Sarah Davignon of The Most Loyal for their help with salting trees!

Set Designs

The following are some tree designs early in the design process:

I like trees quite a bit. These proved an interesting area when it came to taking initial design to actual realization. I knew I wanted to make the trees from wire. The first thing I did was make a few mini versions (floral wire glued onto armature wire, painted and salt-coated) as well as a maquette of the proposed visuals for the set:

Maquette: wire, cardboard, paper, salt.