Creatures XR Video Behind The Scenes

Phew! What a week! We just finished our 5 day shoot of the XR video project I'm doing with Silent Partners Studios and Solotech's XR stage lab.

The concept of the video is to make a beat tape style medley of some of the tracks off the forthcoming Creatures of The Late Afternoon album. It would be live action utilizing some of the fun visual effects and environments we could interact with on a giant XR stage.  

Here are some of the storyboards mapping out some of the key frames we wanted in the video.  Basically, each of the creatures is finding their own way to the the Creature Party!  There are 4 modes of transport: scooter, surfboard, car, and flying through a space wormhole. 

Here's one of the creatures getting ready to head to the party on a scooter. That's my friend Lauren McGowan helping me get the creature claws fitted. 

This is a cardboard monosynth I made (based on the minimoog model d) for one of the creatures to play.

Here's the keyboard in action!  The groovy x stand was built by my friend Vid Cousins (who engineered and produced the Space Cadet soundtrack and also help me mix several of my albums). We haven't worked together all year due to the pandemic so it was fun to just hangout outside and build silly props together! 

Here's one of the creatures in space taking a selfie. 

That's me in the orange suit playing a cardboard bass I built over the weekend. It's design is based on a Kay bass that in turn was based on a Rickenbacker bass. The 6 x 10 amp stack behind me was made while we were shooting the other scenes by Nancy Belzile, who helped design and build several of the miniature sets for Nufonia Must Fall and The Storyville Mosquito. She was able to come to the set for a couple of days to help us out!  I had not seen her since the beginning of the pandemic so it was great to catch up and work with her again!

On shoot day 3, I got to do some surf stunts.  LOL. 

Here I am checking out the cardboard turntable set up. If it looks like I'm in deep concentration, it's because there was only a tiny 1/2  inch sliver of mesh just under the creatures eyes through which I could (kind of) see... 

For the first four days, I had fun scooting, surfing, driving, and playing cardboard instruments, but it did get kind of lonely on that stage... So on Day 5 (the last day of the shoot) I invited a few friends to join me for the full band sequences. Here we all are Natalia Yanchak (on cardboard keys), Tyson Houseman (on cardboard drums) and Lauren McGowan (on cardboard bass) played the other members of the band for these last scenes! There was much laughter and rejoicing!

The next step is to take a look at all of the footage and start the edit on the final video. That's primarily what I'll be getting into for the rest of the month.  I'll also add some further sound design, foley and environment sounds. Silent Partners Studio also have a few more fun visual environment tricks up their sleeves that they want to test out!  

Anyhow, just letting you all know that it's coming along. Can't wait for you all to see the finished clip!

E