New U2 video pieced together nicely

Posted by John Cranston

u2.jpg

Check out this second video for U2’s “Window in the Skies”, directed by Jonas Odell via Nexus Productions in London and pieced together along with the crew at Filmteknarna in Stockholm. The images were scanned in from the new “U2 on U2” book, cut up and pieced together to create this incredibly dynamic 3D journey. I knew as soon as this piece started I was going to like it because I was ready and willing to sit through a U2 video…

Thanks to Seth for passing on the video and information!

20 Comments

nick

great piece

Joe Clay

What an excellent job they did with that video! It’s particularly relevant to me as I’m about to embark toward a similar style.

Lilian

Would like to know more details about how this was pieced together..what’s involved, and so on…any takers?

jon

i kinda like the video that the mill did for that song more

anonymouse

ugh. u2

anonymouse

“Would like to know more details about how this was pieced together..what’s involved, and so on…any takers?”

usually involves building rough 3d geometry of your photo, projecting the photo onto said geometry, do your camera move, and then fix up those places where the texture smears or where you manually have to fill in background information that wasnt in the original photograph.

whole video reminds me of gondrys rolling stone video. just… cleaner and soulless. probably just cause i hate bono

ChicO

While i like the beginning i thought the rest was rather ugly & flat. Windows flying through space, eh?

Joe Clay

Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but a lot of it could have been done in a program such as After Effects using 3D layers. A lot of photos can be faked into looking 3D fairly easily (I’ve seen it done on A&E). There’s a section (1:20-1:28) that they cut people from the backgrounds, and instead of patching the backround back together with photoshop, they lit the layers as if the cut out was the shadow. A lot of that was genious. I especially like the way the reflections in the water were handled. It looks as if they duplicated the layer, gave it a negative x-scale value and put the image containing the water between the two layers with the water knocked out (look at 2:28). That’s how I would have done it, but of course there are many, many ways to accomplish it.

Joe Clay

Oops. I meant a negative y-scale value. Sorry!

Yussef

how inaccurate! and you call yourself a motionographer poster! :)

Rich

Love it except for the fact that it has so soul. I was bored by the end. Still though, amazing camera move.

nynex

You guys must be jaded. That video is amazing. I couldnt imagine how long it took. I guess U2 does have the funds to hire 100 or so people to cutout images of them and their album covers.

Anyways great video it deserves to be seen.

kmfix

I really liked this piece.

As for my guess on how it was done would be a combination of AE and a 3d program… As some of the elements do have depth and aren’t flat. Personally I would have done it all in C4D as it would be very quick for me to compose the scenes and make adjustments fairly fast… I bet all the roto took the longest…

Joe Clay

It probably was some true 3D, but I do think it could have been accomplished without any 3D modeling. :)

Lilian

I agree with Joe Clay..its amazing what one can do JUST with AE..in fact I’d be EVEN more intrigued to find the logistics of the project IF ITS ENTIRELY BUILT in AFter Effects with layering and 3d camera..But what I’m interested to know is the scope on the whole…i.e. time vs budget constrains vs this vs that, what was the decision made with regards to how much of it was 3d and how much of it was 2D..

For some reason what ‘anonymouse’ said seems to make more sense cuz then you can do a rough playblast and make sure the movement etc are all smooth before you start patching it up and glossing it over.

L3nZ

great video, great song, great band.

Jenna H

I hear it was done in 4weeks.
working day and night with a team of 8 and done in AFX.
Budget was very low. as always with musicvideos.

Mr. M

The video was entirely built in AE with 3D layers, no real 3D involved.

John

I emailed a list of all your questions to Jonas, so we’ll figure this mystery out soon

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