Zed’s Dead

Zeds Dead | Living Dead
Director Jesse Ewles www.jesseewles.com

Rejected May 17th, 2012

Concept

Post-apocalyptic beach party.

Approach

Intro 0:00 - 1:00 Using a series of slow motion tableaus, we show a group of horribly disfigured, zombie-like people posing in 50s style beach-party scenes. Behind the zombies, a rear projection screen plays looping footage of an idyllic beach with waves breaking on the shore line. The beach scenes will be lit with a moody red lighting, as if to suggest the events are taking place under a giant heat-lamp. The scenes will feel “staged” as if the beach set has been constructed in a bomb shelter miles bellow the surface.

Middle 1:00 - 3:35 As the pace of the track speeds up, we will cut more quickly to various other beach activities shot in slow motion. Activities include volleyball, hula hooping, crushing sand castles and fake water skiing in front of the projection screen.

Exit 3:35 - 4:30 We cut to face of a dreary-looking lab tech(s) with a thousand-mile stare. The lab tech is sitting in front of a large monitoring station lined with hundreds of colourful lights. A monitor in font of the lab tech displays the beach scenes. Looking bored, the lab tech turns a dial marked “ambient radiation”.

We cut to an image of the sun projected on the rear-projection screen. It glows noticeably brighter. The beach zombies gaze at the burning sun reverently. They lean their heads back as if enjoying the added heat. Slowly their skin begins to melt from their bodies.

We see the lab tech once more, looking desensitized. He turns up the heat further.

To close, we repeat the slow motion tableau pans from the opening of the video. The zombies are still posing enthusiastically, but by now, they have been fried to skeletons by the heat of the room.

Cut to black

Band Involvement

Depending on Zack and Dylan’s comfort level, they can participate in the zombie sequences or simply act as the lab techs.

Completion

Aprx. 4 weeks from the date the productions funds are received.

We Have Band

We Have Band | Love What You’re Doing Listen Here

Director: Jesse Ewles | www.jesseewles.com

Rejected September 3rd 2010

Concept

A video featuring three ancient Tai Chi masters shot in slow motion. The eyes of the masters will flash red and blue to the beat of the song. The movements of the masters will be inter-cut energetically with pop psychedelic animations of Chinese dragons. The band will not appear in the video. The art direction for the dragons will be similar to this:

Technical Treatment

The video will be inter-cut between two scenarios.  Scenario one will feature three Tai Chi masters performing on a set of ruined over grown steps.  The Tai Chi routines will be performed and filmed at twice normal speed, then converted to slow motion in post.  This will give the movement of the performance added intensity and make the footage ominously beautiful.

Scenario two will be an animation based on a Chinese dragon.  The dragon will be an elaborate stop-motion puppet decorated with jewels, metallic textiles and silky fibers.  The animation will feature the dragon snaking through a natural environment with fantasy / pop-psychelic elements (ie rivers of jewels ect)  The dragon peruses the tail of a second dragon.  Eventually he catches it, and in the final shot we see that there are dozens of identical dragons all connected together mouth to tail into a giant psychedelic chain.

????? | ????

Rejected May 14, 2012

Concept

An animation following a stunt bike, as it drives through various colourful L.A backyards.

Approach

The video will be one continuous tracking shot of the stunt rider driving through a variety of Los Angeles backyards. The characters in the backyards will be looping animations.

Mood

The vibe will be similar to the NES classic PaperBoy, except the images will all be hand painted in the style of David Hockney, and the images will move from left to right instead of diagonally. The overall mood of the video will be warm, relaxing and cheeky. The video equivalent of melting neapolitan ice cream.

Shot List

A) An Evel Knievel-style stunt man stands on top of a dirt hill surrounded by colourful streamers, palm trees and a few photographers. The stuntman drives down the ramp picking up speed and charges into a huge loop to loop. He then hits a second ramp and flies over some wrecked cars. The stunt man completes the jump but fails to stop at the victory circle. The bike flies off the course and breaks through a safety barrier into the neighbouring backyards.

B) The motorcycle crashes through multiple backyards inhabited by the following…

A sexy pool party. People are sunbathing and diving. The motorcycle goes over the diving board, lands on the other side of the pool.

The motorcycle passes a steel drum band.

It passes a man scuba diving in his pool.

Girls in a hottub.

A vacant house filled with stray cats.

A homeless man with a barbecue built into a shopping cart, cooking weiners. A flock of seagulls take.

Two 70’s wrestlers, wrestling on a trampoline.

A movie crew filming muppets.

A collection of colourful billboards.

A pornography shoot.

70’s bodybuilders weightlifting.

A group of people rollerskating with a dog.

A ferris wheel.

A fry truck.

Classic cars.

An LA gang, harvesting marijuana.

A graffiti artist painting a mural.

A robot dinosaur eating cars.

A garage band.

A helicopter taking off.

A group of cheerleaders stacked into a human pyramid.

Two Dogtown skateboarders, skating in an empty pool.

C) The motorcycle drives down into the empty pool with the skate kids. The bike flies up the opposite side of the pool into the air. We see the motorbike fly out of the backyards and zoom off of a cliff face towards the ocean. We watch the motorbike fall. A rainbow parachute pops out from the stuntman’s back. He glides slowly into the Pacific, being cheered on by some surfers and some curious dolphins.

Fade to black.

*image by David Hockney

Bruce Peninsula

Bruce Peninsula | Corrugated Screen Test

This a test for the Bruce Peninsula video I made last winter. The idea was to shoot the band footage while it was projected on a corrugated screen. One half of the footage was projected on the lefts side of the corrugations, the other half of the footage was projected on the right side.

The effect worked, but our broken dolly and lack of matching projectors make the footage mostly unusable.

Odonis Odonis

Odonis Odonis | Busted Lip Listen Here

Director Jesse Ewles

REJECTED by Much Fact April 13th 2012

Concept

Dark imagery projected on a stretching latex screen.

Mood & Art Direction

Dark 90’s feel. Seamless blend of sex and horror and humour.

Approach

Step 1: We will create a montage of 90’s inspired images. These will include plates of the band under gloomy daylight, running through a dead forest. Portraits of people with Hypertrichosis (werewolf syndrome). Images of women’s mouths chewing.

Step2: We will construct a large latex screen. The montage footage will be projected onto the screen. 

Step 3. A nude actor will be placed behind the latex screen. The actor will stretch the latex to the beat of the song distorting the projections in time to the music. Periodically, a light behind the screen will illuminate the actor, revealing their form to the camera.

Technical Treatment

Camera: 7D Canon DSLR + Canon EF 24-105mm zoom lenses.

Screen: The screen will be constructed from .45mm thick white latex rubber sheet.

Portable.tv

Portable.tv Interview (unabridged)

This week I did an interview with Portable.tv regarding my video for Of Montreal. I decided to publish the unedited article here —You can view the original by clicking “Portable.tv” above, in case that’s unclear. :)

So Spiteful Intervention is a very mixed media, did you create the artwork as well? How did they come together like they have?

Yes, I painted the majority of the work. My good friends Lee Stringle and Cameron Tomsett came in to help with the final push so we would hit the deadline.

Our approach was to take hand-painted characters and animate them by mapping them to a 3D meshes in Autodesk Maya.

The imagery or idea behind it seems a little dark, what general mood/feeling did you want to generate with it?

Originally I had wanted to do a 3D video in a similar style to artist Jeff Koons collages. That idea was rejected. Treatment one was too pop-arty for track. The first few times I listened to the song, I was focusing on the poppy rhythm of the piano and the change at 1:39. Both reminded me of the Beatles White Album for some reason… anyways, I completely missed how dark the lyrics actually were. The song’s all about self-loathing and battling dark thoughts, so I felt having Kevin’s head morph into various creatures would be the simplest, and most fun way to illustrate that idea. I think the colours, the loose painting and the bounciness of the images, combined with how sad all of the drawings look, matched the song pretty well.

You’ve done quite a few film clips, how do you approach each one with a different mindset and originality?

I’m  curious. I like taking things apart and rebuilding them in different ways.
In art school we were always encouraged to find one distinctive way of working, and to put all projects through that filter. There’s the Alex McLeod filter, and the Martin Wittfooth  filter, the Jessica Rae Gordon filter. They each build little worlds, with their own sets of rules. It’s a great approach for business as Milton Glaser would say. The main thing I took away from illustration was the mechanics of world building.

I think my filter is influenced by the internet I think. My work is filled with the mutts that are created when when the world’s culture begins to have sex with itself and spawn mutants. My videos are experiments, never intended for mass production. If I was writing this for an council grant, I’d say it’s about metamorphosis and the images that live in the crossover between the analog and digital world.

What general process do you go through when coming up for an idea for something like this and how do you develop it?

I like to use the music as a seed, and imagine a world growing out of it. This leads to experimentation by necessity. I’ll listen to a track and think, this song reminds me of a Saturday morning cartoons, or this song reminds me of Voyager Space probe, or troll under a bridge… the songs take you a lot of different places. Especially if you have a mind that’s so full of rubbish absorbed from the internet.

For Spiteful Intervention, I knew I wanted to make images that were dark and creepy, to match the lyrics, but also had a pretty silliness to them, to match the song. I started to think of various images that had that vibe, I could use as influences. Black velvet clowns, the 16th century paintings of fruit arranged to look like faces by Giuseppe Arcimboldo. I also riffed off artist William Blake’s images from the Divine Comedy.


You work with a lot of different media and mediums, do you have one thing you like more than all the others?

My favourite aspect of making videos is that they can be experimentations in storytelling. I chose to make videos in the first place as an alternative to film school, so trying new things and learning the best approaches for setting a certain mood is the whole point. Moving forward, I’d like to work towards becoming a good multimedia storyteller. So for me, it’s not so much about doing more animation, or more live action, but instead developing a long form style where each of those worlds coexist. Not in a Roger Rabbit kind of way. More like how fantasy and naturalistic ideas coexist in our imaginations. For feature film, I’d like to direct meta stories like Slaughterhouse Five (the book, not the crappy movie) or Alan Moore’s  the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the comic, not the crappy movie) or the scifi book Snow Crash. Stories that leave room for absurd cartoons amidst violent and pornographic worlds. :)

Orphan Gifs

Of Montreal | Spiteful Intervention Orphans
Completed April 16th, 2011 

I had the opportunity to do a second video Of Montreal this spring. Unfortunately, among the dozen or so creatures I painted for the video, several didn’t make the cut… I’ve decided to give the orphan animations a home on this blog.

Kathryn Calder | Who Are You (Making Of)

*This is a successful music video post. I’m collapsing the now deduct HiddenItems.org into this blog. My failed projects will now be occasionally interrupted by a successful project, along with insights on what ideas worked and what ideas did not. Enjoy!* JE

Successfully Completed July 24th 2011

In case missed this video, and have little time to watch it in it’s entirety, here is a gif image that acts as a summery.

For those of you with time to kill, you can watch the full version here, and read a review of some of the tricks we used to pull it off below. 

May - July 2011

In the summer of 2011 Cameron Tomsett, Dean Tzenos and I began throwing around concepts for our friend Kathryn Calder’s new track “Who Are You?”. She had requested a “weird, fun dance video”. We threw around several ideas: Belly dancing video? Break dancing C3P0? A Sesame Street parody… Finally we decided on a stream of animated, colourful shapes with sexy lady legs, similar to the “lets go out to the lobby” cartoons at old movie theatres. 

We came up with rough ideas for the costumes. We knew we wanted the designs to evolve and become more complex as the song progressed.

Eventually we decided it would be interesting to focus on animal evolution. We would start from basic shapes and as we added more geometry to the costumes, we would move up the evolutionary tree — Worm, fish, octopus, crab, gator, dinosaur, bird, pony, monkey and finally a human which would be played by Kathryn Calder herself.

Our friend, painter and designer Lee Stringle helped us design the “evolving” costumes. Each costume in the sequence has one or more extra geometric planes, or polygons, than the design that proceeded it. 

Once we had the designs, we had to think about how to best build the costumes. We crafted a 1 meter diameter buckyball out of paper mache as a test, but the prototype was both too heavy and too rough-looking to work for the concept. 

After consulting local builder Melissa Fisher, we decided to build the costumes from large sheets of foamcore. To create the blue prints for the costumes, we built 3D CGI versions of the animal designs in Maya. Using a program called pepakura we “unwrapped” the CGI models and converted them into 2d blue prints.

We then projected the patterns onto 48 x 72 inch foamcore boards and traced the images with pencil. Afterwords, we used box cutters to trim the designs and duct tape to assemble the pieces into the final costumes.

During our construction marathon, I managed to slice the pad off of my index finger with a box cutter. It was 12:30 at night on a Tuesday, and all the stores were closed. Cameron, along with my roommate Brendan, ran around the neighbourhood looking for bandages while I sat pinching my finger in the fetal position. I figured I could fuse the severed skin back onto my body if I applied enough pressure. I had a rotten sleep that night. For some reason, because I have never had a pain in my finger before, I thought finger pain would be mild and easily ignored. It was not.

16 hrs and a few Tylenol liquid jells later, we were back at full capacity. Incidentally, a couple weeks later, the whole end of my injured finger turned brown and hard and eventually peeled off like a leather thimble. Underneath was a brand new finger, soft and pink like a baby’s… 

On shoot day, our friend Chris Chapman set us up in a beautiful room at this awesome photography space Silverline Studios which basically took the project to a whole new level. It came with a small refrigerator full of coca-cola, which I think, Cameron and the dancer Peng Cherry are still dreaming of. 

Later, Cameron and I rented a moving van and drove the fully constructed costumes to the shoot space in the dead of night to avoid Toronto traffic. We blasted Classic Rock Q107 all the way there, since there was no iPod jack in the van’s stereo. Here is one of the songs… 

Here is a video from our dress rehearsal starring Peng Cherry and Cameron Tomsett.

The shoot day was a long 12 hour slog. The wonderfully talented Greg Bliskep worked as our DP. We shot one costume at a time, and used a HD video projector to add colourful animations by Toronto Designer Emma O’Neil, on to the while costumes. 

The day after the shoot, faced with the fact that we had no place to store the huge costumes, Dean, Cameron and I ninja kicked them to pieces. Failing to capture video of this event, is probably the greatest regret of my career….

JJE

Of Montreal

Of Montreal | Spiteful Intervention (version 1)

Director Jesse Ewles 

Rejected January 15, 2012

Concept

A 3D, morphing, animated collage. The images will be similar to the work of artist Jeff Koons, combined with more realistic versions of characters from the Of Montreal album art. The collaged images will be converted into 3D using the post-3D technique popular in IMAX films.

Step 1

We will construct animated collages featuring kitsch images (toys, candy), paint blobs and magazine collage featuring sexy lips, fingers with colourful nail polish and photos of wild animals. 

The lip-stick mouths featured in the animation will sing along to the track as they float through the compositions. The singing mouths will be similar to the giant mouth at the beginning of Rock Horror Picture Show. 

Step 2

The photo collaged images will be imported into the 3D suite Maya and converted into CG.

Step 3

We will paint a nude model all in white with white body make-up. We will paint the model’s hair white with spray-on hair colour. We will project the collage animation from step 1 on the model’s body. The model will be seated against a black velvet curtain to absorb the projectors reflected light.

Technical

The collage elements will be shot and scanned at 4K and animated in After Effects and Maya 3D. 

The final video will be delivered as a 1080p .mov quicktime.

Sum 41

Sum 41 | What am I to Say (treatment #3) Listen Here

Director Jesse Ewles

Rejected May 31st 2011

Premise: The last guest at a formal party smashes up the place in slow motion.

Look: Warm, hazy lighting, similar to Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. The camera will move around the scene on a track shooting at 120 fps.

Synopsis: We see a garden at night, set up for a formal party. The area is deserted. Overhead is a canopy of glass light bulbs. There are two long banquet tables with a 15 foot stretch of grass in between. A ceramic lawn jockey in the shape of a dog stands beside two water bowls. At one end of the party is a “guest of honour table” with a cake and presents. It has a giant portrait of a young woman hanging above it, similar to the giant portrait of the Queen that used to hang in the Winnipeg Jets arena. 

Beside the table is a coat rack, overflowing with coats. Some of the coats are piled on the ground. It seems the guests left in a hurry. At the other end of the party is a small bandstand with a microphone, a couple of amps, and some stools. 

Deryck slouches in a beat up armchair, on the lawn in the centre party. He looks out of place. He seems to have dragged the chair there. He is wearing a soiled black suit with his tie undone. It looks as if he was punched in the jaw. He is not wearing any shoes or socks.

In slow motion we begin a long track shot as Deryck stands up and begins touring the scene. 

Empty seats, glassware, and plates of unfinished food pass in the foreground as Deryck walks. Deryck passes an open air grill looking bored and passive aggressive.

Deryck passes a large pile of unopened presents. He shakes one of the boxes at his ear and throws it over his shoulder. He scoops up the rest of the presents and tosses them into the air. Deryck picks up a piece of cake off a plate and eats with his bare hands as he walks. 

Deryck passes by the coat rack. He shoves the rest of the cake in mouth to free up his hands.  Deryck begins turning the pockets of the coats inside out looking for change. He finds none. Disappointed, his mouth still full of cake, Deryck gathers the coats in his arms and falls forward. The coat rack collapses under him.

Deryck stands up, munching on cake. He wipes his mouth with one of the jackets. 

Deryck walks back towards the banquet table closest to the camera. Deryck climbs up on top of the table and begins strolling across it. We see Deryck from the waist down as he moves. He kicks glasses onto the grass. He steps on a large cake. At the end of the table 

Deryck pulls up the tablecloth and steps onto the bare plastic of the banquet table. Deryck pulls the end of the table cloth around his shoulders, as if it were a cape. Glasses, plates, and food fall everywhere. Deryck jumps of the table like Batman. The tablecloth and everything on it is dragged to the ground.

Deryck heads to the bandstand. He picks up the microphone stand and begins to attack the other equipment. Sparks fly. Deryck heads into the courtyard where the ceramic dog sits. Deryck shatters the dog statue with mic stand. 

Deryck pulls up the layer of sod. He throws the heap of grass and soil at the over-sized portrait.

Deryck pauses a moment, surveying the scene for other areas to attack. Our camera trucks left until the gasoline for the open air barbecue comes into the foreground. Deryck rushes for the can. Merrily, he spins with the can slinging gas all over the tables and chairs. 

Deryck climbs up on the far table. He reaches up and pulls down one of the strings of lights hanging above the area. He gathers the light string up into a ball. Deryck swings the ball of lights and crashes them down on the table. They explode in slow motion. Deryck climbs up and grabs a second string. He repeats the same action, but this time as the lights break, the gasoline on the table sets fire. 

We close with a shot of the fire spreading across the long banquet table. Deryck returns to the centre of the area.  He collapses back into his easy chair to watch the fire.

JE

Technical treatment: We will use practical lighting. The party area will be sprayed lightly with a fog machine to add atmosphere. 

We will shoot at 2k, 120 fps. The camera will be on a track.

Of Montreal

Of Montreal ~ Sex Karma

Director / Animator: Jesse Ewles

Rejected October 5th, 2010

Approach

Mixed Media Freak-out 70’s Animation

Concept

We will make a bizarre, loose, 70’s, underground comic, psychedelic montage. The animations will be inspired by the art of R. Crumb. The colour work on the piece will be highly saturated and feature Of Montreal-esque decoration and colour pallets such as sparkles, feathers, loose paint and metallic textiles and saturated colours. The video will be a mix of claymation, cgi and photography. The video will contain nudity and adult subject matter. It will not be suitable for MTV (without blurring) but will have good viral potential on the Internet.

Sequences

Hump sequence: Amorous men and woman ride on buxom, strong-thighed woman.In the background, 70’s rainbow bursts and colour bars whiz around. Girls being ridden include: Fire girl, roller girl, ski girl and ski dive girl. I’m also open to other suggestions… The R. Crumb drawings will be the starting point, but the characters will take on an original flare once converted to claymation.

Make-out sequence: A looping animation of various animated heads, tongue kissing with one another. Some of the heads will be earnest. Some will be weird. Some surreal. Make out couples include catman + catgirl (Fritz the Cat), a mariachi in a sombrero + a tourist lady in a sun hat, an old Lady + a lemon meringue pie-face, two sea urchins kissing, a black crow pimp + a pig police officer, a nerd + his 8 bit computer screen girlfriend, a man with alopecia + a lady sasquatch with big tits, two horses, a skull head + a pile of worms and two perfectly round twins.

Breast sequence: A montage of breasts from different female creatures [white breasts, black breasts, freckled breasts, old breasts, hairy breasts, spiked breasts, lizard breasts, skeleton non-breasts] As the chests appear on the screen, they are embellished with glitter and sequins.

Eye Sequence: Close-ups of giant cartoon dilating eyes, insinuating orgasm.

CHORUS

Other weird image loops appear during the songs choruses. A dominatrix steps on the crotch of a masochistic bald man. The man digs in his pockets for money to keep the woman torturing him. He pulls out wades of lint, dry clean tags and corroded coins.

Two homeless men spoon on subway grate while being sprinkled with Christmas snow. 

A girl rides a seesaw with a boy lying underneath it. The girl kicks herself up into the air and crashing the seesaw down between the boys legs repeatedly, crushing his junk. He loves it.

Approximate Production time: 8 weeks

Sum 41

Sum 41

Richard Branson Money

Branson Bucks. Branson Bucks imagine a present where Richard Branson is king of the world, and we finally get the moon base and space elevator adventures humanity has been promised for a century. I left these notes around town with my email address scribbled on them, but no one replied. I still have a bunch. If anyone wants a souvenir, email me here jesse.ewles@gmail.com

Kathryn Calder

Kathrn Calder ~ Turn a Light On

Rejected November 10th 2011: Another director will be shooting a similar concept.

Director: Jesse Ewles & Cameron Tomsett 

Concept:  Kathryn Calder sings as she walks through a dark, winter forest illuminated with giant paper balloon lanterns.

Art direction / mood: Warm and cool lighting. Dreamlike feel. The balloon lanterns will be shaped like owls.

Synopsis

a) Kathryn Calder walks though a snow covered forest at night.

b) The forest is illuminated by dozens of large paper balloon lanterns tethered to the base of the trees. 

c) Above, the stars in the sky are hidden by the glare from the lanterns. 

d) Kathryn sings as she walks through the forest. 

e) Kathryn visits each of the large lanterns. She blows out their candles. The darkened lanterns float to the ground.

f) As the light from the lanterns are extinguished, the stars above become more and more visible. By the time the last lantern goes dark, the stars are glowing as bright as fireworks. 

g) Kathryn walks towards a teepee. She lies down on a bed of pine branches and covers herself with a fur blanket. The stars in the sky are glowing brightly.

h) As Kathryn begins to dream, we see tiny colourful clouds of light swirling in her head.