An explosive finale: Grizzly Bear "Two Weeks".

It could be a Revival-style catching of the Holy Ghost, or a slowed-down depiction of spontaneous combustion. Whatever the reason for Grizzly Bear’s barely contained illumination in Patrick Daughters’ promo for their single “Two Weeks”, one thing is for sure: the idea wouldn’t have worked if there weren’t skilled people at the switch.

The VFX company behind the promo’s light effects is The Mill. All three offices - Los Angeles, London and New York - were employed to create the facial illumination, exploding fireworks and enlarged eyes that emanate from the faces of each band member as they sit with choir-boy composure in an empty church.

The Mill’s VFX producer Lee Pavey and lead Flame artist Tara Demarco take us behind-the-scenes and provide a set of before-and-after images that highlight the effects work.

What was the direction from Patrick Daughters?

Lee Pavey: The Mill worked very closely with Patrick before the shoot discussing elements that could be used to create eye-catching effects. On set there was everything from CG head scans to lights being shone through casts of the band’s faces. After the shoot, we then worked with Patrick and Stephen Berger at Final Cut on the look of each character and the linear structure of the story.

Can you describe the process behind creating the two main effects: The enlarged eyes and the light illuminating the faces of each band member?

Tara Demarco: Patrick had strong ideas about the look of the eyes and skin and how the faces should glow from within. The eyes were not only enlarged but the left and right eyes were composited together from different takes to add to the surreal nature of the video. We tried several looks of glow: experimenting with LEDs under the skin and working our way towards an effect where we showed an increasingly bright, hidden light source. We ultimately decided that each band member would have different parts of the face brighten and that those bright areas would get lighter and grow in size until the whole face was engulfed. Once the faces were sorted out, we worked on incorporating glows in the mouth and integrating the explosion, fire, and hair elements.

We used mostly Flame and Combustion on this job. Many of the skin glow elements were shot practically with lights and mannequins, and were then tracked and warped on each of the faces. All of the spark and fire elements were practical as well.

Both of those effects work subtly, they’re central to the idea but are never overpowering until the eventual build to the promo’s fireworks climax. What did you pay attention to the most in trying to achieve this subtlety?

LP: The video was broken down into three parts. The first section (enlarged eyes) was something that we wanted people to notice but only in terms of thinking something was out of place. It needed to make people think, “Did I really see that?” As soon as the faces start glowing you know that a story is developing but you’re never sure what will happen until the end.

What were the main challenges?

TD: The biggest challenge was the fact that there were 68 shots and if we changed direction on the look of any one shot, it affected all of the others.

The second biggest challenge was placing the 2D elements onto the faces and making it appear as if the band were glowing from within. Each face is slightly different in the way it’s lit and it was a challenge to keep consistency in the glow along with gradual increase intensity.

Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know about the project?

LP: This video was the first pop promo that all three Mill offices worked on collectively.

TD: Since the effect increases in a linear fashion over the length of the whole piece, we divided the shots up into sections and distributed them in chunks. There was one team in LA taking care of most of the eye and porcelain skin effects; one team in NY focusing on the end sequence with fireworks; several shots with glows went to London and a second team of compositors in Los Angeles worked on the ramp-up from no glow to full on explosion. As we would get to the polishing stages of each shot, we’d pull a frame or two and send it along to the other offices to make sure we were all on the same page with the look.

www.the-mill.com