Smoke & Mirrors Colors Latest Crash Kings Video
In another showcase of postproduction mastery, Colorist Ben Eagleton teamed up with Scream 4 Director David Arquette to do an arresting, energetic and fun color-grading job on the Crash Kings' You Got Me music video.
The video features the boys in the band hooking up with a group of excitable young ladies, traveling from bar to club to restaurant to tattoo parlor, playing a gig in between and finally landing at a pool party. When the party comes abruptly to a halt because all of the girls begin morphing into monsters and vampires, the crew escapes unscathed and rushes into the open arms of some nice, non-vampire girls.
In the grade, Eagleton had free rein to create the various looks used in the multiple locations featured throughout the video. For this piece, a subtle look was not appropriate so Eagleton opted for lots of color, contrast and variation: a black-and-white scene followed by an intense red scene, white-out to dark and mysterious, and an interior with a Polaroid feel cutting to a saturated sodium exterior. Trish Fuller from The Whitehouse beautifully edited the energetic video, which Arquette shot on a mixture of Canon 7D, Nikon digital and 16mm film.
Credits:
Artist: Crash Kings
Song Title: You Got Me
Record Label: Universal Motown Records, a division of UMG Recordings, Inc.
Prod Co: Independent Media
Director: David Arquette
EP: Susanne Preissler
Editorial Co: Whitehouse
Editor: Trish Fuller
Producer: Jo Jo Scheerer
Post/Effects Co: Smoke and Mirrors
Lead VFX/Inferno Artist: Sam Caine
Grading: Smoke & Mirrors, NY
Colorist: Ben Eagleton
Producer: Paul O'Beirne
Shoot Location: LA
About Smoke and Mirrors:
Founded by Creative Director/VFX Artist Sean Broughton (NY) and CTO Mark Widig (UK), Smoke & Mirrors is a New York and London-based design, animation and VFX studio. The recent addition of a powerful grading suite delivers complete solutions for any type of project. A creative and artist-driven company synonymous with vision and originality since its inception, Smoke & Mirrors has consistently succeeded because of its collaborative approach and ability to build lasting creative relationships with directors, producers, agencies and clients alike.
Production in the New York office is led by CCO Sean Broughton, MD Jo Morgan, and Head of Production Sue Romweber. Diverse projects includes the highly challenging Beatles spot for Rockband, as well as spots for LG, Jose Cuervo, and Dove. Recent music video work includes Deadweather's Treat Me Like Your Mother and Michael Jackson's This Is It. Smoke & Mirrors has also been involved with such feature films as James Bond and Harry Potter. Each office is fully networked via complementary systems allowing the companies to share resources, expanding their local capacities. Close involvement with hardware and software manufacturers and developers has kept Smoke & Mirrors at the forefront of innovation and technology.
