Filmworkers

CHICAGO— You can count Filmworkers among the biggest fans of budding country music superstars Lady Antebellum. The Nashville post house provided creative editorial, color correction, visual effects and editorial finishing services for American Honey, the Grammy-winning trio’s latest music video, which recently made its world debut in tandem with Lady A’s February 19th appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

The video, directed by Trey Fanjoy, known for her work with Taylor Swift, Keith Urban and many other country artists, features a series of poignant vignettes in which the group’s members reflect back on scenes from their childhood—with a bee pollinating flowers providing the thread that ties it all together. “This video, more than anything, evokes a bitter sweet nostalgia, a longing for days gone by and simpler times,” notes Fanjoy. “The honey bee is a metaphor for that urge to bring some sweetness into our lives.”

Filmworkers has collaborated with Fanjoy many times. The director estimates that editor Adam Little has cut more than 100 of her videos over the past decade and through that work they have developed an easy rapport and a similar approach toward storytelling. “Making beautiful imagery is the easy part,” says Fanjoy. “More important is to get the emotional tone exactly right and that is what Adam always does.”

Little notes that editing music videos is a bit different from cutting other narrative pieces as the pace and tone of the story are set by the music. “That’s my favorite part,” says Little, “finding a way to complement the music while telling the story. I try to think of the editing as another instrument. I want to help people hear things in the track by what is happening visually.”

Filmworkers has developed sophisticated resources for efficiently meeting the technical requirements of projects like American Honey, including the ability to properly manage digital camera files. (Fanjoy shot the video with the RED camera.) In the facility’s recently upgraded workflow, raw RED files are ingested into the local storage of a Quantel eQ workstation and are then available for creative editorial, color correction, visual effects and editorial finishing. It’s fast, preserves the quality of the original media and allows post production artists to work in a collaborative environment.

“The colorist can either take control of the EQ directly and grade straight off disk, or we can lay it off to an SR deck,” explains eQ artist John Slinger. “When the grade is done, I can then take it straight back from telecines for lay off.”

Because of the commitment to The Oprah Winfrey Show, the project had a fixed deadline with no margin for error. A rare snowstorm that virtually brought Nashville to a halt could have jeopardized on-time delivery, but Filmworkers used its new Slingbox technology to keep things on track. Fanjoy, who was snowbound at her home, was able to use the remote collaboration tool to monitor color correction work being performed by colorist Rodney Williams as it was happening from via a Mac computer.

“Rodney and I were able to establish a really great look while I was sitting in my home office,” Fanjoy recalls. “I could see his screen and exactly what he was doing in real time. It was a wonderful tool.”

Slinger performed final editing and also applied a variety of subtle visual effects touches that included shot repositions, beauty work, and rig removal. Fanjoy notes that when she was shooting the video in Southern California, a film shoot was going on nearby and crew and production gear from it were visible in some of her shots. Slinger used EQ tools to expertly paint out those unwanted elements. “John is wonderful at sorting out a lot of issues,” says Fanjoy. “He comes to each problem differently and with a big grab bag of tricks. Some artists are good at beauty work and some at visual effects, John is good at all of it—he is a great problem solver.”

The entire post process spanned about a week of intense activity. Given the tight deadline and the significance of the project, Fanjoy said it was important to work with a team she knew well and trusted. “I’m really grateful to everybody at Filmworkers,” Fanjoy says. “They are great people, great to work with. If you are going to spend long hours with people, it’s good to enjoy them.”