Coming off their massively successful song and video for "Safe And Sound," Capital Cities turned to Carlos Lopez Estrada to co-direct their newest video for the song "Kangaroo Court." The band came up with the idea of a nerdy Zebra trying to get into a club that doesn’t allow his species, and it combined perfectly with Carlos’s style. The video is a lot of fun, but also pretty dark at times, and is actually able to make a broader point about acceptance and understanding, despite being filled with a bunch of human-like animals dancing around a nightclub. We talked to Carlos about the video, co-directing with the band, and working on a project of this size.

Doug: In the BTS video, Capital Cities mentions that they co-directed the video with you, how did that process work out?

Carlos: The band wrote this concept almost a year ago with their good friend Cutter Hodierne. Cutter had a great short in Sundance called Fishing Without Nets that ended up getting picked up by the Directors Lab and developed into a feature with him attached as the director. They had to schedule production in Africa roughly around the time when the Capital Cities video needed to be shot, so Danny Lockwood arranged a meeting between the band and myself to see if we could work together on the video. We basically just talked for hours about their treatment and how we could execute it in a realistic way. They seemed to like my ideas but also wanted to stay creatively involved since they had been so close to the project for such a long time - so next thing you know, we were co-directing the video. It was a smooth collaboration. They were incredibly involved throughout the process but they also made it very clear from the beginning that they wanted me to take charge of the video and do whatever I thought was best for it. It was a very exiting assignment to work with someone else's story and figure out a way to make it my own.

Doug: What did you base the style of the animals on? How did you determine the look they were going to have?

Carlos: We worked with these great guys from a special effects company called Sota FX. They've done all sorts of historical projects from designing Power Ranger costumes to fabricating all the creatures in Ed Wood - both were favorites of mine growing up. All we really knew was that these had to be prosthetics and not full masks because we wanted to be able to see the actor's faces and their expressions clearly. We looked at a ton of references, went through a few rounds of designs and did some actual make up tests on the actors. Eventually, they ended up making all the appliances out of latex foam which was light, cheap and molded perfectly into the actor's faces. I don't know if this is getting more technical than you hoped for. I guess overall, we just wanted the animals to be as human-like as possible. A more hip and less creepy version of the Zoobilee Zoo characters.

Makeup tests with actress Shannon Woodward

Doug: This video had a ton of moving parts, a huge cast, complex locations, and lots of makeup and costumes. Was this the biggest production you've worked on? How was that to manage?

Carlos: It was the most stressful and the most fun experience I've ever been a part of. I had just finished the Caged Animals' video - which we did for next to nothing - so the jump into this monster madness was really extreme. I have to give our producer Kim Stuckwisch a shout out here because she really managed the whole project beautifully. It was a big production but by no means glamorous; we begged and borrowed as much as we would in a no-budget video. We shot for two days with two units and barely made our days because there was so much stuff to do and keep track of. Our whole crew worked harder than I even thought was possible and everyone was so emotionally invested in the project that it felt like we were wrapping a month-long shoot when we were done. I definitely had a few of those "how did I get here?" moments throughout the weekend...when I was asking Shannon Woodward to bark with more emotion, for example.

Speaking about barking, I think I should also talk about the cast because we were lucky enough to work with some great people on this video. About this time last year, I was working on a feature project that ended up falling through only a month before production. The interesting part about this story is that the lead characters were a couple in their late 20's and I had actually presented both Shannon and Darren to the producers as my wish cast. I don't think we ever got a chance to contact Darren because he was busy being a superstar on Broadway and taking over the world; but Shannon's tv show was on a hiatus and she was actually really interested in the script. She would have probably ended up in the project if it hadn't fallen apart. Anyway, by some crazy miracle, I ended up working with both of them on this video, exactly a year later, which added a really nice symbolic touch to the project.

Carlos with producer Kim Stuckwisch

Doug: The video has kind of a sad ending, but the title of the song "Kangaroo Court" implies that it might. Was that always the plan, and going into the project how did you anticipate people would react to it?

Carlos: One of the aspects of the story that was most interesting to me was the contrast between humor and drama as well as the real-life parables set in this silly fantastical world. If you remove the animal element from the story, it's a pretty tragic tale. It seemed like a unique opportunity to create somewhat of a modern fable, which was really exciting. And now I'm over-analyzing my music video about a zebra. I don't think its too dark...is it? There is much more morbid stuff out there. I guess it may be unexpected because the rest of the video is so lighthearted? I hope people think its funny, then get really sad, and then think its funny again... and then realize their lives have been changed forever.

Ryan Merchant, manager Dan Weisman, and Sebu Simonian

Doug: Despite the sad ending, did you guys look to intentionally add some humorous elements into the video as well? Or am I am weirdo for laughing at some of this video?

Carlos: Well, I'd say it depends WHAT parts of the video you laughed at. But seriously, this was a very good opportunity to get cartoony. I think it's pretty obvious that we borrowed a lot of inspiration from movies like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Howard the Duck. The show Dinosaurs was also one of of my favorites growing up and I think some of it the ended up subconsciously in the video. What I'm really trying to say is that there is very little work I did that wasn't just stealing from my childhood memories of late 80's shows.

Doug: There was also a sweet poster (below) made in promotion of this video, how did that come about? 

Carlos: It was designed by a brilliant man called Devon Gibbs. He is responsible for some truly unforgettable print campaigns for movies like Drive and Only God Forgives; and also shows like Hemlock Grove and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. His work is really great and he also deserves major props because he designed this one in less than two days. I'm not sure how exactly it'll be used but most likely sold at concerts and online. I really like it. 

Check out a behind the scenes look at the video here:

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.