When director David Lewandowski heard they would be making a live action version of the 1988 Japanese animated film Akira, he was very excited. However, after hearing about the film getting canceled, David decided to create much of what he would have seen in that film for one of his own projects. That project ended up being a music video for the Flying Lotus song “Tiny Tortures,” starring Elijah Wood. We talked to David about how Elijah got involved with the project and how the desire to see some cool technical effects turned into this amazing music video. 

Doug: I read that the idea of this video came from you being disappointed that a live action version of the 1988 Japanese film Akira was canned. How did this project grow from your desire to create what you would have seen in that film into what is now a Fly Lotus music video?

David: I grew up watching a lot of anime and being really fascinated with the very technical animation style. When I first started doing motion graphics, I didn't get to do much of that stuff, I didn't get to do a lot of character animation. It was a lot of lower thirds and title sequences. When I started to do more directing and started to be more in control of the creative, and to make the things that I wanted, I stated to draw on a lot of these influences that I had when I was growing up. I'm a huge fan of The Manga, and of the film, and of all of that guys work. Otomo is brilliant. When I first heard the film was going to get made, I was so excited because I heard that Jaume Collet-Sera was going to direct it and I knew that he would do a lot of the effect animation justice. There are just a lot of opportunities to make really beautiful effects animation, I was really excited about that. He was actually running around the office at Caviar, where we did some of the post-production, after the film had been canceled and I was so excited to tell him, "Hey man, I'm making a music video and the impetus of it is because your movie got canceled, and I was sad that I didn't get to see the images on screen." When Steve [Flying Lotus] approached me about doing something for the album, it was long before Elijah was involved and before I had even heard the entire album and he started sending me tracks. I had some squigglings of an idea, a few thoughts on what I wanted to do. The original idea had nothing to do with Akira, I had some other different directions I wanted to take it in. He kept changing the track he wanted me to do as well, and with that the idea of the track keeps changing and shifting. When Elijah got involved, I realized I had an opportunity to do something that would be really visible and that I could make really beautiful, I started to bring back in a lot of those Akira and Enter the Void references to make it more psychedelic and more fascinating.

Doug: Had you already started working on how you would technically accomplish these effects before the specific project came to you?

David: I did a couple of things with object tracking, after my Friendly Fires video the previous year, where I was using a lot of LED to match-move object and then replace them with CG. I was pretty familiarized with the methodology, so when I starting thinking about replacing an arm and doing performance capture of an actors arm, I realized it wouldn't be too different than doing two object captures, one of the forearm and one of the bicep. And without getting too technical, you just do a solve with the inverse kinematics of the arm so it bends and rotates correctly. There are things like forearm twists and wrist rotations. When I had the idea I immediately starting doing motion test, there are a few that you can see in my process video, and there are some that didn't make it in because they didn't make it into the video. Apparently, the internet really likes it when Elijah’s face is distorted, there is a lot of memey stuff with Elijah, and I wanted to service the desire to do something interesting and weird with his face, so originally when he goes into this drug trip world, I wanted his face to kind of melt. Imagine your head standing still, and your face melted off, but without your head melting off. Just your feature, like your eyes, nose, and mouth slipping and sliding off the sides of your face to the back of your face. I did all these tests for stuff like that and really like the way it looked and wanted his face to get all soupy and weird, but once we finally got into it I realized it just wasn't right for the video. You're kind of a slave to what the video wants to be, there is an expression that I'm paraphrasing, but once you have the skeletal video together, it's tough to steer it to a totally different direction that doesn't feel right, and that stuff didn't feel right.

Doug: So even beyond casting Elijah and setting up the production, the way effects would work, and the way you would executed them, and how they would fit into the video, all that stuff was still growing and changing?

David: Absolutely, man. Much to my VFX supervisor’s credit, he and I did a ton of tests and really tried to explore as much as we could without having the actual footage in. We shot the video really dark which made the tracking difficult. It wasn't easy. I think we threw away like three weeks trying to track in SynthEyes before we switched over. We had a heart-to-heart late night during postproduction and said, "I think we just have to learn a whole new software package. We have to take a totally different approach because this is not working." So, we learned this other software packing called PFTrack in like two days. The entire team had to learn it, so we just clicked over and learned it and retracked everything. It was a tremendous amount of research and even in the postproduction process, while we were editing, we still had to make lots of changes.

Doug: You guys didn't reshoot, did you? You switched over to a new package because you thought it would work better with the footage you already had?

David: Yeah, and it did, too. It did marvelously, I don't think I'm ever going to use SynthEyes again, I'm pretty sold on PFTrack. We just quickly bought a license and we all racked our brains learning it. There are tons of things that change in post. There is a whole other plot in the video that got cut out because we editorially changed so much. Lots of that stuff changes.

Doug: That's interesting, I guess one would assume that a video with so many effects would be so rigorously preplanned, it's cool to hear that you were able to be organic throughout the process.

David: It was preplanned, you do storyboards, and you do an animatic, and you do previs and postvis so that you know what you're getting to. Then you get notes from your friends, or from the artist, or the label, or your production company, everyone has their option about it. It has to be permeable. It has to be flexible in some way so that you can make some changes. Obviously with an effects video it is ruthlessly preproduced.

Doug: And part of what comes from that preproduction world, the video is full of a lot of subtle elements, such as the hilarious get well soon cards that Elijah has on his dresser. Do you hope people pick up on those right away, are they in there for a “second viewing”? What role do subtitles like that play?

David: Those things are just kind of silly and stupid. There is not a lot of reason to put things like the get well soon cards in there other than for a dumb laugh because they're so silly and you would never get a get well soon card like that. It's just so arrogant and mean. There was a whole other plot in the video that got cut out about him having survivor’s guilt. The story was that he got in a car accident and his girlfriend died and he had survivor's guilt. That was the reasoning behind why he was addicted to painkillers, and had the amputation, and spent the whole day in bed tripping and fantasizing about having his arm back, and getting his life back, and getting to play sports again. There was originally a lot of shots of this girl that we cast. There was stuff involving photos of her on a nightstand and him interacting with them and remembering her. When we cut all of that stuff out, I felt like it was more interesting to let the photos of her in the background play. I also changed the lock-screen on his phone to a picture of the two of them together, hoping that it expands the world a little bit and lets you think about what’s outside the frame and how this character ended up like this. Things like the cards, and there is a bunch of decaying flowers that you can't really see but are on the nightstand, lots of details like that I'm hoping that people get, but not to much intention for people to watch it over and over again. There isn't that much subtlety.

Doug: Going back to the casting of Elijah Wood, how did he get involved with this project?

David: Elijah and Steve and I all know each other. We are all fans of each others work, and Elijah had seen going to the store, a short film that I had done the earlier year, he'd also seen my Friendly Fires video. Steve is also a big fan of both of those things. Obviously, everyone is a big fan of Steve and Elijah Wood, so it just became, "hey, why don't we make something weird together? I want to make something weird with you, I'm a fan of your work." Then we exchanged some emails. I always tell people I have some more exciting story, some ridiculous lie about how Elijah did my tax returns for me, or that’s he's my landlord. But, there is no interesting story, we're just fans of each other’s work and got connected over email. I sent him the treatment, he loved it, he said great, we worked out the scheduled, shared some references, talked about some things, and then he showed up. It's funny because on set, we hadn't actually met in person yet. I was really, really paranoid because his email address is so weird, so I was really paranoid that I was going to get a professional Elijah Wood impersonator, like a 45-year-old "Elijah Woods" or something would show up on set. I was really relieved when he turned up.

Doug: I think that story is way cooler than if he was your landlord, especially the part where you were fearful that it might not really be him.

David: I knew it was him, there is just always in the back of your mind, when you haven't spoken to someone on the phone and you've only talked to them over twitter and email, that there is always a chance that this is going to blow up in your face.

Doug: So when he finally showed up and it was actually him, and you guys begin to shoot, are you giving him much stage direction? Or is part of why you cast an actor of his caliber is so he can bring his own interpretations to the role?

David: Oh man, when you work with a real actor, because I don't work with real actors, I work with open casting actors, but when you work with a real actor it's so nice. It's so so nice. They know what you want before you even know what you want. They just nail it the first time, on the first take with no rehearsal, it's like, "great we got it. Let's do some other variations and a bunch of stuff." But taking credit for directing an actor of his level is like saying that you're directing Anthony Hopkins. You're not directing them, they're going to come in and they're going to give you what they think is right, and maybe you'll get some flexibility, but you're not going to tell them how to do their job. With Elijah, I gave him a brief of what it was and shared reverence and performance ideas, but that was it. When we sat down and he got on camera, he just nailed it every single take. I felt so overwhelmed and pleased to work with him, they make your job really easy. I wish I could take credit for his great performance in the video, because he is great in it, but I can't.

Doug Klinger is the co-founder/content director of IMVDb and watches more music videos than anyone on earth. You can find him on twitter at @doug_klinger.