Paul McNeil is an artist and director and who lives in the sleepy surf haven of Byron Bay, Australia. Brendan Cook is a designer, filmmaker and founder of Sydney studio PictureDRIFT. We asked Brendan some questions about 'Rock Bottom Riser':
About the response to the video
Making this video and seeing how it has travelled around the world on the Internet has really opened my eyes to what an amazing and powerful cultural tool the Internet is - especially for those film makers who are on the fringe - because you can find an audience which may not be available to you in your country. The video has taken on a life of its own as it is almost a year since we first made it and it is still being played and talked about which is pretty great for the "quick turnover" medium that is music video - we are sure that the beautiful music has a lot to do with it.
About the making of
All artwork was hand painted by Paul. He sent a huge selection of images (over 300) down to me in Sydney at PictureDRIFT. I then selected various images and scanned these in to do make an animatic/edit, which we both then agreed on before animating. I then cut up the paintings in After Effects so that I could animate various elements of each painting separately in 3d space and combine paintings together to make new images and transitions if needed. A mix of filmed smoke and ink images were combined to make mattes that the paintings are revealed through.
About Smog's involvement"
Smog / Bill was certainly involved along the way, we showed him early tests to make sure he was into the idea and look of it all. He is very easy going and really just let us do what we thought was best.
