So how was Chemical Brothers' Star Guitar done?

#1

…so it’s been > 15 years since that video, and I STILL wonder how it was done! The only thing I can think of…is that the whole thing was done by hand!!! i.e. a human modeller made each individual train, house, tree or whatever, and human compositors chucked it into the footage frame by fucking frame according to the beat, with Mr. Gondry overseeing operations! Am I right about this?

As a software type, I find this highly…donno what the right word is… maybe “Wrong”!?? Hard labour is just…Not My Thing! The second thought I had was that it’s some kind of “Max script” - like, they feed the software the MP3 of the song, and every time there’s a drum beat, the script throws in a train or whatever. Even that doesn’t feel like what’s going on - it’s too cohesive, it looks like “art”. Would that have been possible with 2001 technology? Donno. Is it even possible today??

My third thought, and this thought came about realising that the “song” isn’t really very musical - like, there’s no singing or anything, like all Chem Bros songs, is that they simply shot REAL footage, like just sticking a camera on a train and taking a ride, and made the song later, to it - it’s very repetitive, and sounds computer generated, Highly Suspicious. LOL. I have a feeling this is not what’s going on either.

So then, we’re only left with the first option. Is that what happened? Anybody know? After all this time, I think that bug in my brain needs satisfying.

#2

It’s all hidden in the motion blur

It’s a pretty straight-forward comp-job. The perspective always stays the same, so that makes it easier. They must have build a library of assets that they could pull up according to the beat. what’s a drum-kick, what’s a beat, etc. etc.

the foreground objects are probably mapped onto 3D geo to have the perspective change while passing them by but if you pay attention to the background, you can see that they are just cards and the perspective doesn’t match. Plus with a lot of the objects the lighting doesn’t always match.

Cuts are cleverly hidden when objects pass by like trains and such.

It would have helped to have access to the different tracks from the sound, as the waveform will allow you to see when which beats appears. In theory it could be scripted that whenever a spike appears in the track, an object is being pulled, but honestly it would also be possible by hand.

when the video changes from day to night, you can actually see the cross fade of the train as the object doesn’t match up.

it’s a super-creative idea for sure, just not that difficult to do once you’ve set up the objects you need. set up a camera on a train when you know that for the next 10 minutes it will go in a straight line. film this a couple of times and you’ll have plenty of footage to work with.

#3

Ah OK, so I WAS right? :slight_smile: How much fucking WORK was that?!!! Did they hire out every VFX company in existence or something? :smile:

#4

Well, you wrote it yourself - hard labour is not your thing, right? :wink: I kinda doubt that they had to hire ‘every VFX company in existence’. I don’t even think, it’s that difficult or labour intensive. I love the idea. super creative and unique. If I had to do something similar with my team, I’d probably assign 3 or 4 of my guys max (given that the footage is already on hand…) and give it a time frame of about 10 days…

#5

You’re nuts :slight_smile: These guys would be like, millionaires or something, I assume? :slight_smile:

So…what about all this “AI in CGI” I hear about?:slight_smile: Will that like, shorten the timeframe or something? Can the software do most of the compositing by itself now…?

#6

4 guys for 10 days is nuts? that’s 640 hours combined. how long do you think a production like this should take?

computers are not creative, people are. ‘AI’ might make some things easier but if you give control away and rely on the result that a piece of software creates, your results become unpredictable and mediocre at best

#7

Er - then let’s just say I’m glad I’m not a compositor, let’s leave it at that :slight_smile: (fucking TERRIBLE job, if you ask me…)

What’s your opinion of modern “top 40” music then? I’d be curious to know…? Do David Guetta and Martin Garrix and the hundreds of others not sound like an algorithm to you? How come the public doesn’t care? Have they gone Mad? You can count the amount of “real music” songs on a radio station on one hand… For that matter, Star Guitar itself is also an example of this, as I already said!

#8

No job in this industry comes ‘easy’ or without hard work. You get out what you put into. There are no shortcuts, no ‘the computer does a better job’ or ‘AI takes over’. As said before, computers are not creative. They make repetitive tasks easier and faster. But I have yet to see artwork created by a computer without human input that looks convincing and great.

I assume you used to work as a compositor for a while to be able to say it’s an ‘effing terrible job’? The guys in my team like their jobs as far as I can tell. And after all, it was their choice to get into the field… :slight_smile:

I don’t listen to Top 40, so I am the last person who could comment on this really…

#9

No I didn’t actually, I just once saw a Natron tut video on Youtube, and I got the general idea - well, better you than me :slight_smile: someone’s gotta do it :slight_smile:
But dude, keep an eye out for AI in this field, will you? Not doing so would be being utterly stupid, IMHO (AND a disservice to your team, also IMHO, no matter how much they LOOOOVE whatever). Here, just as an example, I Googled this for you:

#10

I would suggest you watch at least two more videos… LOL

I’ve been in this industry for almost 25 years now. a new ‘industry killer’ is announced every few months. faster computers are going to kill this, new software is going to replace that. so far I have to come across one thing that actually made someone completely redundant.

Things change all the time and it’s never a good idea to become too comfortable and too complacent in what you do and what you know. I constantly encourage my team to learn something new, to stay up-to-date in their skill sets and to stay relevant in their fields