THEY didn?t need any industrial light or magic for this one, and George Lucas himself would probably agree.
But to make UpDharmaDown?s ?Taya? music video ? which is nominated for Most Mind Blowing Video at the 2009 Asia Voice Independent Music Awards (Avima) in KL, Malaysia, tomorrow ?they did employ over 5,000 photographs, countless LED flashlights, and an obscene amount of colored cellophane for this decidedly low-tech project to see, well, the light of day.
Using stop-motion/slow-shutter photography to write and draw with different light sources, young director Nicolo Reyes and his Unitel-ISK production team achieved the impossibly cool by thinking ?retro? and going against the CGI-saturated grain.
?In this age of special effects, I felt the best way to move forward was to take a step back: we went analog, using traditional photography and manual light graffiti animation,? says the 24-year-old filmmaker, who is an in-house director of Unitel Productions, where he has spearheaded TVCs for Dunkin Donuts, Colgate, San Miguel Beer and the Philippine Daily Inquirer (the ?Dare to Ask? campaign featuring Ninoy Aquino, Lea Salonga, and Romi Garduce).
?The idea came in a sort of eureka moment while I was in Tokyo last May and saw a group of artists ?light painting? for a video installation project,? shares Reyes, whose AVIMA-nominated video will face stiff competition from India, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand and four fellow Pinoy nominees ? Taken by Cars, MRI and Out of Body Special ? during tomorrow?s awards show (catch it online via www.voize.my).
?Pulling it off was ambitious, to say the least,? he adds, before illuminating Super on the laborious details: four months of intense planning, three experimental test shoots, and five sleepless nights of production around the streets of QC, Makati, Ortigas and Las Pińas. ?All the effects were done live and on camera. This gave the video a very raw, choppy feel that blended perfectly with the song.?
What immediately strikes you after viewing ?Taya? isn?t so much the technical skill by which it was creatively cobbled together ? but how the light, in all its neon, hand-painted glory, takes on a Pixar-perfect life of its own: hollow pink hearts that implode into floating musical notes; fluorescent fibers of rain that dribble from Crayola-green clouds; or tentacle-like doodles that slither around your TV screen like gummy worms gone wild.
?The lights, you see, are the music in physical form ? they?re like these highly stylized sound waves,? says Reyes, who utilized a similar style for the UpDharmaDown?s first single, ?Maybe,? where he played with the idea of stark silhouettes against dancing stage lights. ?They are, if you haven?t noticed, the main characters of the story.?
Talk about light entertainment.
Cast your online votes for tomorrow?s AVIMA 2009 Awards at voize.my/awards.php. Watch UDD?s ?Taya? at the MusikCinemaNeu channel of Pelicola.tv, the country?s first Internet TV site.
