Released today and already with almost a million downloads the new Weezer Pork and Beans video features actual internet ‘celebrities’ in recreations of some of the net’s most famous moments from History of Dance, Britney guy, Mentos guys, Ryan vs Dorkman, Numa Numa Kid, Afroninja, Will it Blend, the list goes on and on. In short, it is a cameo-fest of the net’s most famous and infamous. This could be the Viral Video of all time.
Directed by Mathew Cullen, the video was done by Motion Theory. MTh is an LA based company that mixes both directors and artists it is a micro-studio, that does production through a combination of creative development, filmmaking, and innovative visual effects. The company’s unique Venice studio, near Digital Domain in Venice, and it unites the efforts of directors, animators, designers, visual effects artists, writers, in a collaborative and multidisciplinary approach. Most of the clip was shot in HD and then cropped down to 4:3. The Visual Effects lead was Danny Yoon (1.1 vfx), well known in the flame community as a leading innovator, he worked here along with an After Effects team.
While there is a good amount of compositing, the actual ‘net stars’ were flown in for the event. Interestingly, Ryan and Dorkman who are featured in the video – did their own compositing. Michael (Dorkman) Scott: “Motion Theory understood our unhealthy obsession with the look and feel of the lightsaber effects, and placed a lot of trust in us to turn our shots around under a very tight schedule. We did it so quickly that they added several shots to the slate! Though ultimately only a portion of both what we shot, and the effects we did, wound up onscreen, it was a tremendous honor and we are forever grateful to MT and Weezer for making us a part of this project, on both sides of the camera. Meeting everyone whose videos we know and enjoyed — and discovering that they knew and enjoyed ours — was incredibly surreal. Everyone there was incredibly cool and the shooting day was one of the most memorable experiences of my life”
Watch the video on YouTube: http://tinyurl.com/5lsrrc
And in a side confession: fxguide’s own Jeff Heusser worked on it while freelancing at Motion Theory.
simply fantastic
Hah! Love it, all they need was the grape-stomping woman who fell- way to give those internet 1-hits another few minutes of fame!