• Yeasayer “Wait for the Summer” (We Are Free)
• Director: Mixtape Club
• Producer: Mixtape Club
• Production Company: Mixtape Club
• Animators: Mixtape Club, Arthur Hur, Andre Salyer, Joe Posner
• Designers: Kim Dulaney, Andre Salyer, Mixtape Club
• Storyboard Artist: Andre Salyer
• Length of Production: 4 weeks
• Location: Brooklyn, New York
• Budget: “We’re big fans of the band, so it wasn’t aboutthe money for us. We just asked for their firstborn sons.”

Our new feature series, Anatomy of a Music Video, takes you behind-the-scenes for a look at the making of a music video – from script to screen. Our first spotlight is on Yeasayer’s Wait for the Summer, directed by Mixtape Club who have quickly made a name for themselves with their richly textured animated work in videos for J Dilla and TV on the Radio. A new addition to Hornet’s roster, they’ve also recently completed spots for Showtime and visuals for Bette Midler’s new show in Las Vegas. Check out the video with exclusive commentary from the Mixtape trio (comprised of Chris Smith, Jesse Casey and Michelle Higa), peruse their creative notebook and see exclusive “making of” footage.

I was able to ask Mixtape Club about how their lovely video came into being…

How did the Yeasayer project reach Mixtape Club?

Jesse’s known the band for a long time; he met Chris and Anand in 6th grade. We’ve all been fans of their music, and chatted informally about videos back before they released their album. When Anand shot us an email from their European tour asking if we were interested in making the video for their next single, we were onboard no question.

What was presented to the band that helped you secure the job?

For every project we do, we create a “notebook” online where everyone on the team will add anything

Here’s an exclusive look at one of Mixtape Club’s notebooks. Wait for the Summer Creative Notebook, DOWNLOAD PDF 404KB

that they think is a good reference for the project. This usually has all kinds of stuff: visual ideas, techniques we’d like to try, references images, reference animations. Not all of it makes it into the video directly, but it’s all good stuff to have in the back of your mind. This notebook was what we sent Yeasayer before our initial meeting, based off of our own internal Mixtape Club talks and listening to the song. Turns out we were all on the same page about Joseph Cornell, Dada, and Surrealism.

How much input did the band have on the concept of the video?

It was pretty open. Yeasayer’s emphasis was on something visually striking, rather than traditionally narrative. They were also open to include the band in the video however we wanted – as long as it wasn’t the usual “band playing their instruments” cutaways. Seasonal change and hibernation were ideas that they brought to the table from the very beginning.

Still image from Wait for the Summer

Mixtape Club seems very selective about which videos you do. What attracted you to this project? What do you look for in a music video project?

We wish we could do more music videos. It’s difficult since they are longer format and thus take more time to complete, and they tend to be lower budget so they are really a labor of love. With “Wait For The Summer”, as with the other music videos, we were attracted to the creative freedom (both story-wise and visually), and the challenge of a 3 minute project vs. the 30 second projects we work on commercially. And Yeasayer is awesome.

Check out an animated sequence displaying the evolution of scene two from the video.DOWNLOAD QuickTime Movie

Your work has a strong focus on animation with very little (or no) live action at all. Can you describe the different types of animation used in the Yeasayer video? Is animation your true passion or do you think you will ever do a live action (non-puppet/costume) project?

Sure, we’re excited about telling stories in any form. Animation is great because it’s so flexible, but we’re always talking about new projects using different techniques. We’d love to do more with live action, but we also have ideas involving miniatures and projections and other methods.As for the types of animation used in this video, we used stop-motion, pixilation, 3D animation, photocopies, and video feedback.

The song has a definite Crosby, Stills and Nash kind of vibe, coincidentally the imagery accompanying the music has a similar Earthy theme: leaves, seasons, cosmic fruit planets. Was this intentional?

The imagery evolved organically from the themes in the lyrics and conversations we had with the band. The initial concept of seasonal change and hibernation came from the band. From there, we started writing little stories and brainstorming imagery for specific moments in this process of change. At this point I don’t think any of us are exactly sure where the ideas for the visuals came from or what they mean, but we feel the world of the song and video has a kind of internal logic. The instrumental lines set up a foundation, the different vocal parts weave in and out, and of course the apple falls underground and then the beetles fly into space. um?

Walk us through the process of making “Wait For The Summer”

To be honest, it was kind of a whirlwind. But here goes – first we met with the band and shared our initial ideas, things that got both Mixtape Club and Yeasayer excited. From there we put together a list of visual ideas and treatments for the video. The band liked the seasonal treatment best, which was then developed into the beetle/apple story arc that you see in the video now. Andre made storyboards, and we all animated them into a full-scale animatic for the video. Once the animatic got the thumbs up we put together a shot list we needed of the band and had a one-day shoot where we got green screen footage of Yeasayer performing the song from all different angles (and spinning on a lazy susan). Around the same time we hit up Maxilla & Mandible and bought a bunch of preserved beetles, fossils, and bones. Then it was three weeks of production, pretty much everyday doing a mix of matte paintings, stop motion photography, and animation. Each morning we reviewed the progress, and slowly but surely the video took shape. Once all of the final mattes and stop-motion sequences were plugged in we did a final grading pass and hit save and render. Then we slept.

I noticed a couple different types of cameras (video and DSLR) in the production photos. Why did you decide to make this video in HD?

We made it HD because we love the additional pixels – there’s more room to play with lighting and texture, even though most people usually end up seeing our stuff on the internet. We also prefer wide-screen aspect ratio and try to use it whenever we have the chance.We used a couple different digital SLRs to shoot high res stills. We shot image sequences for almost everything in the video in order to get a moving grain and changing highlights. The flexibility you get with the camera RAW format is great.The only video footage was the band against green screen or with video feedback. In the past we’ve rented nicer HD cameras, but this time we bought a cheaper prosumer camera and hooked up the camera directly to one of our desktop machines and captured straight to hard drive. The resolution of the image was higher than it would have been if we had shot to tape. Our setup wasn’t fast enough to capture uncompressed video, but since we knew we were only concerned with the band’s silhouettes, we didn’t have to worry about loss of image quality due to compression.

Tattoos of Yeasayer’s Chris Keating (above) and Luke Fasano (middle) were used in the final video. DOWNLOAD QuickTime Movie showing how these elements were layered for final scene (bottom).

In the production photos I noticed iPods and tattoos - how were these used in the making of the video?

The iPod was our slate when we were shooting. We had our animatic with a big time code slapped on top, which we held in front of the camera for each shot. When it came time to sync everything, we were able to use the frame numbers to line up the band performances to the track exactly.We knew we wanted crabs in the video early on since Jesse, Chris, and Anand grew up in Baltimore. It was a nice coincidence that Chris had a great crab tattoo, so we ended up using a composite photo of his tattoo in the video for the crab. Then when we saw Luke’s pattern tattoos, we were playing around with the crab shots and it turned out they made great patterns in the sand. Kind of a serendipitous thing.

Is there any significance of the green beetle/green apple correlation?

Remember that episode of Planet Earth where the cordyceps fungus bursts out of the ant’s head? That was awesome.

For more info on Mixtape Club visit their website, where you can watch/download “Wait for the Summer” for your iPod and listen to “mixtapes” compiled by the Chris, Jesse and Michelle.