And in my opinion, pretty boring.
It's become almost a cliche here at SCWS that if there is a complicated way of doing something, I'll go for that nine times out of ten. Not because I'm a sadist and like watching the crew suffer, but because I love a good challenge and, in my defense, there was nothing simple about the Painted Lady. At all.
But some people still don't quite understand why and what's taking so long to get this bun out of the oven, so I thought I'd go into some more detail for you guys who are interested. So I've devised three little breakdowns to show you what we're up against.
First, lets look at the overall scope. Now on an average music video, as I said, the processes is quite linear. Pre-production takes a couple weeks at most. They're normally not high concept and unless you're talking about Usher or Linkin Park, they're normally not big special effects pieces. Costumes are modern designer clothes that can be purchased from a store, set pieces are locations that they found or a studio that has a basic backdrop and nifty lighting set up. Also, in most cases, the video is focusing on the band/artist and cutting away to them can take up a lot of the time that would otherwise have to be filled in with something else. And that something else would have to be figured out.
Now, I'm not saying this is the almighty formula that everyone follows. There have been a lot of music videos over the years that were high concept and wandered far from the set standard. But the standard is quicker to develop, cheaper to make, and doesn't run the risk of some dumb fan 'not getting it'. Don't get me wrong, I still find myself impressed at some directors ways of shooting even these simpler videos in ways that make it new and fresh. However, pre-production on those shoots is simply considering theme, color, camera angles, location, lighting... you know, the basics.
We on the other hand, had a much different creature for pre-production, which lasted almost three months. Starting with casting, we had to find the right pretty lady to be in our painting, then we had to do research. Lots of research. Like, were the shots we wanted even possible? I remember early on googling a little tidbit regarding video texture mapping and the one article that came up was a thesis paper from a student at the University of Columbia, stating the theoretical possibilities for what I wanted to do. So yea, there was never a guarantee that prosumer special effects were up to par with what we wanted to achieve.
Then there was other research to do. Those of you with a keen eye may have noticed a striking resemblance between the painting and the art of Dutch Golden Era painter Johannes Vermeer. That's not a coincidence. In fact, as an added easter egg, if you look carefully in the lower right hand corner, you'll see his actual signature.
We knew we wanted a Golden Age painter and we settled on Vermeer for two reasons. First, his woman were always portrayed as strong, feminine and delicate, three characteristics I love in a lady. Second, because Vermeer was just so damn good at portraying light naturally, that his style would be the easiest to duplicate, digitally.
Now almost 75% of Vermeers' paintings take place in the same room, which was his studio in Delft, Netherlands, and from the same angle. His color palette is very peculiar to him, as he used ostentatiously expensive pigments in his paintings. We also decided to open the music video showing Vermeer in his studio, painting our 'fruit maid', so more research went into what he looked like and what his studio would have looked like, in the real world.
We even came across a random little picture code that was used among the dutch painters of the time: The foot warmer code, or is it became known here as, the Virginity Box. The foot warmer, that can be seen in the lower right hand corner of the painting, was a pictorial code of the time, and represented the woman's marital status. A foot warmer wholly under the skirt indicated a married woman who was unavailable; a foot warmer projecting halfway out from under the skirt with the woman's foot visible on it indicated one who might be receptive to a male suitor; and a foot warmer that is not under the woman at all, and empty of coals, indicated a single woman. This code can also be seen in Vermeer's The Milkmaid and Dou's The Young Mother.
So yea, we did our homework. Which got us into another stage of preproduction most music videos never have to worry about: period art design. In the Painted Lady, we show four different time periods: 1660s Netherlands, 1940's Europe, 1950's New York City and modern day Manhattan. All of these periods had to look a certain way, you can't have modern furniture in a bombed out building in war ravaged Europe, or craft store bought paint brushes being used by a 17th century dutch painter. So a great deal of time and effort went into getting the details right. We even built a portion of Vermeer's studio here to avoid more green screening work.
One of the more challenging tasks was to create the look of a war battered American infantryman, played by Tom Liles. Evidently, since Saving Private Ryan came out, collectors the world over have bought up every single piece of American regalia and uniform ever made during this time period. Don't believe me? Search Amazon for world war 2 uniforms. I'll wait. Done? What'd I tell ya. All you can find is Nazi memorabilia, nothing American at all! Luckily we had an amazing costume designer and a living World War 2 history guide on this, who together helped us piece together a field uniform that ended up being quite convincing and historically accurate, right down to the netting on the helmet and the period Thompson machine gun.
Costuming was actually a whole other obstacle in and of itself, with the Painted Lady, played superbly by Taylor "NeyNey" Light, going through three or four design iterations before we landed on one we felt worked. Tom goes through four costume changes in this, from battle hardened GI, to early 50's Manhattan tycoon.
Then there was makeup. Anyone familiar with Neyneys' work knows she loves her ink. I'm still trying to convince her to join us in getting the company logo tattooed on her. But in Vermeers' time, tattoos were mostly limited to pirates and tribal natives, and had a very limited palette. So those had to go. Same with her hair, which is a silvery purple color in real life. Every day before shooting, Neyney had to go through a two hour makeup and wardrobe process to transform into her character. A lot of kudos have to go to her for being so cheery about that, especially when shooting in Albany, where she had to do the makeup herself, in a car.
All in all, pre-production took about three months, with weekly production meetings, set building, costuming, make up tests, story boarding, effects tests, etc. So that's all for this one. Next time, I'll talk about the production process, and give you guys a bit of a glimpse at how fun it is to hang out in a green room for six hours straight.
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