The Audreys Sometimes the Stars: A Retrospective

Long days hunched over a glowing screens; a studio with a tendency to leak during heavy rainfall and countless games of Left 4 Dead. These are some of my memories from the intensive production of the animated music video Sometimes the Stars.

Sometimes the Stars is the new single by Australian band The Audreys. It's a great song. It's also perfect for the sort of mature animation that I strive to create.

The creation of the music video involved some amazing artists, a killer compositor, and a hugely creative and enthusiastic Producer who all came together to create a beautiful clip of which I am proud to have been involved.

The clip's origins lie with Luke Jurevicius head of animation studio Vishus Productions and Tasha Coates lead singer of The Audreys. The pair, who dated briefly for a time, had remained close friends since and had always discussed the possibility of an animated music video. With the release of their new album, that opportunity presented itself.

One of Shane Devries initial concepts for the ocean of stars

Luke, who had worked with me briefly in the past and with Jason on several projects, was eager to collaborate more. He approached me initially as an animator for the clip, to be done in 3D. The idea was in that wonderful nebulous phase, not yet locked into any one direction and open to a thousand possibilities. Concepts at the time included strange robed characters and a sea of monolithic space creatures. I'd always been intrigued by monolithic space creatures and, after expressing my interest, he sent through a treatment and some early sketches by South Australian artist Shane Devries. The treatment was a simple but brilliantly crystallised idea - a young girl wearing a flickering star necklace journeys through a surreal sky on the back of a strange creature towards a dimming star. Shane's sketches, as always were beautiful.

In fact Shane is incredible, super-quiet, super nice and incredibly talented both traditionally as a painter and digitally. Many concepts from his early surreal sketches survived through into the final clip.

Shane Devries' original character sketch

The first step for me was to present the idea to Jason Pamment, whom I've worked with many times over the past five years. In 2008 we made a film with Eddie White and the People's Republic of Animation (PRA) called The Cat Piano. You can see it here if you haven't already. That film began as a vehicle for me to practice 2D animation in Photoshop. I'd begun using the program as an animation tool on a few commercial projects at the PRA but I really wanted to develop some skills as a 2D animator on something more involved, more artistic and more personal. I also wanted to create a more robust 2D pipeline, but I won't bore you with the details of that.

Jase was one of the first to join The Cat Piano crew, initially as the background artist before becoming Art Director as his responsibilities increased. He's a remarkable man. He's fully proficient as both a 2D and 3D artist, and he has a uniquely delicate touch, which I sorely lack. He's also super quiet. Actually I'm developing a theory about this. See I've worked with countless people in this industry and always those super-quiet people, like not just quiet but really really like almost silent people: they're geniuses, all of them. I swear these people, of which I know a few, they're all the same, they're capable of doing a huge variety of things and always at a ridiculously high level and yet they're all so modest. They just sit quietly churning out consistently stunning results. I'm still waiting to have this theory proven wrong.

Anyway point being Jase is a joy to work with. The Cat Piano ended up being a lot of hard work for the both of us and, while we were fairly happy with the end result, there are a few issues that still leave us cringing a little. Issues with pacing and visual inconsistency, for which I am fully responsible, afflict that film. I'm confident with this clip, at least in construction, we have improved.

So Jase and I discussed how we'd approach the clip if given the chance. The first thing we both agreed was that the subtlety and maturity of the song would marry well with the warmth and artistry of a 2D approach. Luke had really loved The Cat Piano so we figured we could persuade him that it was the right direction to take.

We also lean towards 2D for the simple reason that, while it may take ages, it's so much easier on the brain. Both Jase and I have heaps of experience working on 3D projects and comparatively 2D is just so soothing and technically simple. Perhaps more importantly, I find it much easier to quickly generate empathy for a 2D character than with a 3D one, a benefit in the short length of the music video.

Our second intent was to develop the core idea into a complete narrative, one that would span the length of the song. We discussed changing the surrealist fantasy environment into a dreamscape, the elements within transformed: no longer creatures, rather suggestions of memories and allegory for the girl's emotional state. We conceived structure and scenes: the cold industrial world where the girl waits, the waterfall at the edge of nowhere and the void beyond. And for our conclusion I was particularly set on giving sentience to the star. I wanted a character; a character in some ways unique, but one who could, at the same time, act as a mirror for the Lost Girl and create a meaningful connection.

early character concept for the initial pitch by Ari Gibson

Finally we conceived a denser more oppressive atmosphere and a graphic theatrical approach. We discussed working in greyscale for both efficiency and to achieve a tonal consistency. Jase and I quickly whipped up some super-rough concepts and I wrote up a new treatment with these elements in mind. I summed up our intended direction in the initial paragraph of this new treatment. It reads as follows:

A grey world, lit like a stage: all bulbs and spotlights. Outside the windows of an old tram pass layers of wooden flats, on them Illustrations of a dream-world. Stars hang in the sky, twirling as if suspend on string.

concept image for the initial pitch by Ari Gibson & Jason Pamment

Over Thai food we pitched the treatment to Luke and Shane and professed our desire to work with them to create it. They must have seen something in our concept and the enthusiasm with which we approached it: we left the meeting with pre-production on a 2D clip for Sometimes the Stars beginning the next week.

My studio is small but cosy, with nice lighting and comfortable carpet. It was here that the four of us began a feverish pre-production that would last two weeks and culminate in a finished animatic and near final concepts. Notably for me: the storyboard, which I drew over an intensive two days, was created with certainty and came easily. The animatic we showed The Audrey's at the end of pre-production not only made Tasha cry, it gave us confidence we were on the right track.

Beatboards by Ari Gibson. At the time we had intended for the interior of the tram to have a warmer tone than the world outside.

Within this pre-production phase the Lost Girl was developed and given life. From other characters that have fallen by the way came her large blank eyes, a feature I'd been interested in experimenting with for some time. From them I was eager to see what range of emotion we could generate and had hopes the audience could project themselves into the character through these huge vacant orbs. Likewise the proportions of the figure, with the long skinny legs, stem from a disused sketch from the project that Jason and I worked on before this one. Luke and I continued to develop the character to what she finally became, with Luke producing a fantastic range of sketches fleshing out the character in his distinctive quirky style.

character sketches by Luke Jurevicius, including some early versions of the supporting cast.

As the characters emerged so too did the environments. My storyboards have a tendency to be background heavy, part out of laziness, because it reduces the amount of animation that I'll end up doing, and part because I know that Jason will do such an amazing job of creating them. Fortunately for me the symbolic nature of the dreamscape meant we would easily transpose emotional and narrative elements onto the environments, which helped the strong Background focus remain engaging throughout the clip. Jason developed these environments during the pre-production phase, stripping back elements to more graphic suggestive shapes, emphasising silhouettes and shrouding scenes in mist.

one of Jason Pamment's early background concepts, emphasising the theatrical lighting approach.

With the groundwork now laid we began the long work of production. And so it went for several months. I've heard that the atmosphere of a studio profoundly influences the work it produces and definitely it did in this. It was quiet. Given how long we have worked together, Jason and I communicate very little through production, rather we work, consistently and for long hours. This project, like most, became all consuming. For three months we worked, days beginning around 9.30am and ending between 9pm and 1pm. Saying that it was, as always, a deeply rewarding process. I prefer production to any other stage of filmmaking, I love how all encompassing it becomes, how you get buried in it, lose perspective, but feel this constant measured march towards completion. I know this because I write it from within production on our next project and again I relish the journey.

As mentioned earlier we use Photoshop for both the 2D animation and the backgrounds. After Effects is used to tie the pieces together. While we work digitally we always strive to replicate traditional techniques, shying away from 3D integration. Saying this, there are always a few moments when 2D methods simply take too long to implement and we resort to 3D programs. Often we'll painstakingly paint over these elements frame by frame in order to integrate them better. I hope with this clip we have managed to disguise these moments enough that they don't ruin the flow of the piece. I find it truly difficult to watch obviously 3D elements alongside 2D animation. Its creates unnatural contradictions in the visual language and can appear truly unsettling.

For a period of several months we continued but our isolation was not to last, for as the project neared its midpoint we were joined by Compositor Ryan Kirby. Ryan Kirby, more affectionately Kirbington or Kirby, in the midst of a busy schedule put aside a month to join us and begin to assemble the chaotic jigsaw of disparate components we had created. Now Kirby, like Jason, is not just a highly proficient 3D artist, he is also an excellent compositor and finished shots quickly began to appear before us.

Finally illustrator Jarrod Prince and animator Joshua Bowman, assisted with colours, shadows and generally uplifted us with their positive attitudes.

And like that we were done. Jason finished the backgrounds and tagged in to finish the compositing on Kirby's departure. I finished the last bits of animation, before joining Jase to iron out a laundry list of minor issues and glitches. The last shot to finish, a couple meeting on a rainy platform, ended up being the one of which I was most proud. I remember when initially we conceived the scene I could picture it vividly and I'm glad the final result could match that vision.

When we began production on Sometimes the Stars I said to Luke we'd be aiming to make one of the top ten video clips of all time. It's not really relevant to me if we ever reach such a lofty goal. It was however symbolic of the strength of our commitment. A commitment to making the best film of which we were possibly capable.

Experiences like Sometimes the Stars are unique in the intimacy of their creation; to see the purity of the storyteller's voice not lost in the din of a larger team or commercial intent. This retrospective was written in the hope of recording some memory of that process. As creators all too often when a project is finished we discard it almost completely from our minds. These words will serve to remember what was an incredibly gratifying experience and a unique end result formed from a tiny team all possessed of immense talent.

Now onto the next one :)

by Ari Gibson

Animator and Co-Director