DYNAMIC ARTIST INTERVIEW + THE FRIDAY JUMPOFF | De La Soul | 5.31.13
Technological Transcendence of Culture | Part One
Click here for Part II of our Interview
One.
It all starts at one.
One person, one day, one moment. The person can be you, the day can be any ole arbitrary day, like the first day of school or the first day you drive a brand new ride, and that moment can be the single most extraordinary or monotonous of your life.
One however, can never act alone, and whatever way you choose to look at any given situation — we, are the sum of our parts. In looking back at any of those previously mentioned “ones,” none of them happened solo, you systematically have to plug-in variables, let’s call those variables memories, when remembering the “ones.” And all the experiences, and all the memories, and all the crazy twists and turns that combine time and time again, make up the whole existence that is our lives.
It’s kind of like a Rubik’s cube.
Today we bring you an exclusive interview with Posdnuous, who represents one-third of the legendary hip-hop trio De La Soul, and discuss exactly how “Get Away (feat. the Spirit of the Wu)” started out as a single old school idea and became a hustled piece of work created by a super tech savvy artistic collective. The video’s directors Lenny Bass and Kris Mercado, join the conversation to round out the story of this collaborative effort:
THE SOUL DYNAMIC: There’s a point in the video where Dave gets water dumped all over him, how was watching that for you?
Posdnuous, A.K.A. Pos: For me that would have been like suicide, I never would of done anything like that. It made me think back to when we did the “Oooh” video and they tried to make casts of our faces, they started putting this stuff on our faces and I almost felt like I was going through torture. When Dave was doing it he looked like a trooper though, he was trying to hang in there, but quite honestly, when they were pouring the water on him, he looked a little concerned (everyone in the interview starts busting out laughing at this moment), it was hilarious! One day with his blessing maybe he’ll let us leak some of those videos. When it was going down it was quite interesting to say the least.
Pos and Dave
THE SOUL DYNAMIC: How was the concept of the Rubik’s cube born?
Pos: From what I recall, we were just kicking around ideas and trying to figure out how we were going to present the video visually. Dave from De La Soul, had actually sent out a holiday card on behalf of the group to different people we’ve worked with and when Lenny saw the card, he thought it’d be an excellent idea for a video. The card had half of our faces put together to make one face. So we started thinking of one-dimensional style tricks and other things we could possibly do, and then Dave took it to the next level, saying why don’t we use a Rubik’s Cube? From there the sky’s the limit in terms of what we could do and try to put together creatively. Lenny and Kris were definitely taking notes of what we were suggesting, as well as taking into account some of the concepts Lenny had spoken to us about and already had in mind.The idea took birth from there.
THE SOUL DYNAMIC: Because the concept was so technical, did that make it harder to actually produce and star in the video, how did it effect you guys?
Pos: It was definitely a challenge, but I think a creative challenge we were all up too. I know in shooting it we were just very happy to be running through it. And because we were so amped to do the video, we were doing a lot of moving to the beat, which we realized later we should have stood still for, because the stillness would of translated better in some parts of the video with the effects we wanted to do; say if it was my part on top of the cube and Dave’s in another section. Outside of that, it was just really cool. And when we started seeing footage after the shoot, we had to imagine how it would look like inside the cube, and Lenny and Kris did an amazing job wrapping our minds around it, showing us what was going on in specific scenes through the use of color coding different sections of the cube.
THE SOUL DYNAMIC: Kris and Lenny, want to throw anything in here?
Kris: From an edit standpoint it was like dealing with four edits at once almost. It was kind of crazy, you basically had to do an edit for each side of the cube. It speaks to what Pos was talking about, because we had to color code everything to know what side was what. It was a really ambitious, kind of difficult thing to accomplish.*
Lenny: The key word is — ambitious. I think even in shooting the live action stuff, we had to keep remembering the details of how one thing related to the next. With Pos looking to his left, how were we going to match that with Dave looking to his right, with elements turning into cards, or the transformation of the balloon, it was vital to figure out what was what. And for as small as a production that we had, we still tried to make it feel big and you know, fill it with quality…
Pos: (Pos jumps in excitingly) Quality was definitely translated. The video came out amazing, the work that all the fellas put in, along with the guidance of Lenny and Kris — it just came back dope, that’s what I’m hearing back from everyone and now I got people asking “so you ya’ll on a major?” It’s being well received at the moment.
THE SOUL DYNAMIC: Pos, how was it working with these two guys, how were their styles different and how did they ultimately bring your vision, De La Soul’s vision to life for this video, this concept?
Pos: Our relationship with Lenny goes way back, he started out doing lighting on the road with us, and then he just took off doing everything else and we’ve been like family ever since. And this was our first time working with Kris, so personally how they dealt with us was great, we all listened to each other and they implemented great ideas that we wanted, along with contributing great ones of their own, so we all worked as a really great team. In the end the production had a great feel. We’ve been blessed to do a lot of videos and technically speaking — it damn well looks better than any video we ever done.
Kris: That’s dope! For me working with Lenny was cool as fuck. Because I respect him a lot, and to be a younger director coming up right now, Lenny honestly served as a mentor on this project. He’s well-known, smart — it was just a nice dynamic to have on set him and I. And it was cool to step back at points and watch him work. It was a great learning experience for me and hopefully for Lenny too, because he comes from live action and I’m more of a 3D kinda of dude and having those two backgrounds collaborating, hopefully that means something.
Pos: No doubt.
Lenny: I agree, because I learned a lot. This process, as Pos will tell you, when you’re doing live action stuff it’s a two-three week turnaround. “Get Away” was a two month turnaround. We shot on March 13th and we just finalized it Tuesday (May 28th), it was a big learning curve for me. As Pos was saying, early on we’d see the rough cut of the live action and try to imagine where its going to live once it gets composited into the cube. And the whole time I was asking Kris, “are you sure, are you sure this is gonna work, come on tell me what’s happening here,” and Kris is telling me,”no don’t worry, don’t worry about it, it’s gonna be perfect” and at that point De La had just released the single on Rolling Stone (April 17th) and we still were a month out. There was a lot of pressure to deliver, and for it to be on point, and we just wanted to make this thing right so that it fit with what De La represents, and with what we represent in making sure the picture was gonna be perfect.
As you can tell this was a huge undertaking from a technological and creative point of view. That being said, we’ve broken this interview into two parts. Monday we dive deeper with De La on the state of hip-hop, their storied career and inspiration.
Writer | Rene Ramirez
Photographer | Jonnelle Monzon
*Technical insight from Dorian West, VFX Supervisor, Caius Wong, VFX, and Ethan Simmons, Editor “Get Away (feat. the Spirit of the Wu)”:
Dorian:
The primary challenge in this video was working with the multiple edits of the band’s performance and syncing it across the sides of the cube. Caius (VFX) and I had to be aware of the cube’s performance as well, making sure that compositionally, the band and cube weren’t competing against each other. Making sure that this inanimate object came to life through the band’s actions and lyrics was the creative thread we were all working from. From a rendering/lighting and compositing standpoint, we had to bend the lines between what was photo-realistic and what would best sell the “gags” we were trying to convey. We used a 3D studio max for animation, and Vray for rendering/ lighting. After Fx and Nuke were used for compositing, the footage was placed onto the cube using UVW passes.
Caius:
The biggest challenge for me was rigging the cube to animate and having the individual squares be able to switch direction at any given moment. Getting this rig right was essential to being able to give the cube a realistic feel that could interact with the beat/lyrics. I used a 3D Studio Max to create the 3D, and a Vray to light the scenes in order to match the backplate footage we had taken earlier. Dorian and I coordinated daily to make sure our work flow was solid so there’d be no hiccups. The key part, was being able to provide him an image that he could use as a guide in post to place all the footage after the 3d renderings were complete. If he didn’t have the ability to put in the footage after the 3D was all rendered out, we’d be in an extremely difficult situation.
Ethan:
This was definitely one of the more complex edits I’ve ever worked on. If it wasn’t for the organization of Kris, Lenny and Dorian it would have been a real mess in post. Needless to say, everyone was super psyched to be working on a De La video. “Saturdays” was one of my favorite jams back in the 90s so I am super proud to have worked on this project.
As far as the process on my end, the first thing I did was do a previz cut that Ahmed Klink shot so we could gage how many plate shots we would need on set. And then I did a storyboard cut that showed the action during each scene. After that I got the footage from the shoot and cut the plates together and handed it over to Caius so he could make his magic with the cube. While he was doing that, I starting assembling a performance cut which was really the fun part for me. The hard part was being able to set it up for Dorian so he would know what shots went where. So then I came up with the idea of color coding my shots to the cube as you can see in this screen shot above. And that’s a small big piece of how we kept things together.
