Director: Lorenzo Fonda
Production Company: Ghost Robot
Exec Producers: Mark De Pace & Zachary Mortensen
Producer: Judy Craig
Concept by: Sean Hellfritsch and Rob Wilson of Encyclopedia Pictura
Staff Producer: Natasha Giliberti
DP: Justin Gurnari
1st AC: Tiffany Aug
2nd AC/Loader: Jared Wennberg
Steadicam: Niels Lindelien
1st AD: Matt McKinnon
Production Designer: Eric Archer
Puppet Designer: Michelle Zamora and Viva La Puppet
Art: Samantha Fawaz
Art: Christian Fritsch
Art: Danny Gaughan
Art: Moran Levi
Art: Julie O’Leary
Art: Juan Ramal
Gaffer: Stefan Silvers
Key Grip: Cameron Schmucker
PA: Zoe Farmingdale
PA: Chris Carlson
Actor/Boy: Tate Birchmore
Post Production: Coyote Post
Editor: Celeste Diamos
Colorist: Robert Crosby
VFX: Adam Petke & Jacob Mendel
Post Production Supervisor: Julie Hansen
Coyote Post Executive Producer: Rik Michul
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I’m not sure if Caribou and his label had ever planned to make a video for the track, but when Sean Hellfritsch and Rob Wilson of Encyclopedia Pictura approached them with the concept, they loved the idea so much that they decided to find a budget and move on with the production. But shortly after Sean and Rob got pulled away by a big project, and couldn’t commit to directing the piece. So my company Ghost Robot asked me if I was interesting in stepping in and direct the video myself, to which the only answer possible was when we begin?
All this to say that Sean and Rob deserve the credit for coming up with such a simple and brilliant and moving concept, and Dan and his label for going with it. I basically only took it from there, hoping I could inject a bit of my own ideas into it without altering their original vision.
PRODUCTION NOTES
This is the creature sketch I gave Michelle Zamora, the puppet maker, in order for her to start gathering materials for the creature’s body.
Me and Michelle surveying our homework. My original idea on how to build the creature was to get an advertising blimp, fill it with helium and then cover it with our textures and materials, so it would have been easily pulled around while floating mid air.
But when we started laying materials over the blimp, we realized it was never going to sustain the weight of them. So we considered different options, one of which was rigging the creature to an ATV with a pole and pull it around like that, but it would have been too much to handle with the limited amount of resources we had.
Our solution was attaching a metal cable from one tree to another along the path where the kid and the creature would be racing, and then rig the creature to the cable and pull it back and forth, as if it was a human attached to a zip line flying over some Costa Rica forest. Here it’s us scouting the location and figuring out where to attach the cable and how long it would need to be and all the technicalities.
Here’s master puppeteer Michelle Zamora trimming some hair while production designer Eric Archer makes sure the creature is properly suspended and rig will hold. Additional piñata hanging from the ceiling for good omen.
Art department, working on the little things.
Creature is done, and is magically moved overnight by some happy elves from the studio to the location.
Tate doing a trust test with the creature. They both passed.
We had a stunt coordinator on set, for the scene at the end where Tate falls to the ground. Even though it doesn’t really look like from the video, Tate was actually pretty excited to do a proper stunt like the big people do.
And here’s how the creature worked when being pulled along the zip line. It actually looked a bit scary when it came alive like that, but Tate wasn’t slightly phased by those dozens of pounds flying just a few inches over his head.
Some panels from the storyboard. The creature design is a bit different from the final, because I’m not a time traveler.