P!nk: All
I Know So Far
Director Dave Meyers
It's not every day that a music video renders us speechless, but that’s exactly what happened when we pressed play.
Grayson Gilcrease, popsugar.com
Video Still © Sony Music
Concept Art by One Pixel Brush
With more than 25 years of groundbreaking videos by everyone from Missy Elliott and Kendrick Lamar to Taylor Swift, Outkast and No Doubt, Dave Meyers is one of the most prolific directors of all time.
Meyers’ own relationship with P!nk goes back to 1999, at the beginning of his career and her first clip for “There You Go.”
“Since this song is sort of the story of my life and a letter to my daughter, making this video with Dave after we did our first video,” said P!nk. “This is a really special full circle moment.”
Meyers adds, “The saga of me and P!nk is very long and it is very rewarding, we are so close,” says Meyers.
an abstract metaphoric life story
Mundo Enriquez
“The beauty of where P!nk and I are now is really the culmination of 22 years of friendship. In this video, I am trying to capture the full breadth of who she is, where she has been and the troubled youth that’s evolved into this idea of the power of community. It is where we are in the world right now and displays the idea that we really need each other.”
“All I Know So Far” combines evocative production design, eye-popping special effects, guest appearances from Cher, Tony-winning actress Judith Light and Pink’s family. To tell this story, Meyers turned to frequent collaborator François Audouy to conceptualize a twisted “Alice in Wonderland-like” journey requiring the creation over 28 practical and digital sets.
Chapter1
Behind the Scenes
A Mind-Bending
Blender Workflow
To design and conceptualize the video’s dozen mind-bending worlds, Audouy engaged visual development studio One Pixel Brush, led by Art Director Shaddy Safadi.
Audouy jump-started the design process by creating a 39-page “look book,” full of reference images, sketches and photo-bashed sketches that would become a sort of “living document,” constantly updated and shared with his art team.
The concepts for the surreal imagery were spawned via intensive brainstorms over Zoom between Audouy and Meyers, with Audouy photo-bashing and sketching live in Photoshop. These references provided the jumping off points for design development at One Pixel Brush.
Safadi adds, “OPB artists were able to create very well realized concepts quickly using rapid 3D modeling and composition techniques. This allowed the director to quickly see many versions, easily move the camera and light and 3D and iterate many times on the ideas.”
The appetite for 3D illustrations grew when it was deemed to be a viable workflow to have these design assets passed directly to the VFX pipeline at BUF, the visual effects studio based in Paris. Geometry and textures from concept art could be reloaded as post-production assets, resulting in considerable time savings — time that could be then spent iterating on quality instead of building geometry and environments. “In the past the artist and technical 3D artists were very different professions,” states Safadi. “As technology and talent advances and becomes easier, those disparate skills are more often becoming more joined into single superstar artist/technicians.“
After falling from the sky onto a cactus, the cinematic visual finds P!nk battling a trio of pig-faced giants, literally running through a shower of slings and arrows and stumbling through a desert filled with floating eyeballs, among other trippy images.
The “Land of Giants” would prove to be one of the more complex world’s to realize.
An exaggerated city was designed to symbolize a greedy world of banking and arrogance. For the foreground, a set was built on a raised platform, with performers balancing on their shoulders — their heads hidden in holes cut into the sand-covered ground. Only several performers were photographed and then replicated to create a sea of legs disappearing into the horizon.
The three giants were performers on stilts, wearing heavy latex prosthetic makeups. P!nk was photographed separately, and then composited as one of the multiple elements that would make up the complex scene.
Chapter2
Special Effects
Shooting
Scramble!
Only two-weeks was budgeted for prep, proving the adage that music video schedules are not for the feint of heart. During this time, illustrations continued to be iterated on, round the clock, as sets were being constructed by Vision Scenery.
Vision would build a three-wall bedroom set using lightweight aluminum framework for the ceiling to allow for a one-day load into the stage at Thunder Studios.
A full-size bow of a pirate ship was also constructed on a six-foot platform. A 3D model of a ship was provided by BUF, and then modified by Vision’s in-house Art Director Mundo Enriquez, and sized in collaboration with BUF. This allowed Vision to CNC-mill foam that would align perfectly with a composited CGI ship.
In tandem to milling the pirate ship, Vision also milled a giant cactus as well as a portion of the desert island, all from low density EPS foam, using files modeled in Rhino by Enriquez.
Late in prep, Meyers decided that P!nk needed a vehicle that would be fitting of her own personality, so Audouy and his Art Department Coordinator Jess Madia embarked on a frantic search for a unique set of wheels, and found them in a 1967 black and gold Ford Mustang Fastback—a true show stopper.
Audouy designed a bedroom for Willow that would feel like a warm and protective nest.
Chapter3
Post Production
A Roadmap
For the Future
Meyers imagined an ambitious 18 beat long dream sequence for the opening of the video, as Pink reads a bedtime story to her daughter Willow. Initially, the concept was to create theatrical scenery, as a stylized school play, but Audouy sold Meyers on the concept of stylized shadow boxes that looked hand-crafted from thin paper-like material.
These intricate 2D worlds would be created using traditional illustration techniques in Photoshop by One Pixel Brush. They continued to iterate on these designs all the way through the post production phase. The layers of the files were then rebuilt in 3D by BUF.
The tight integration of concept design and visual effects efforts throughout the project resulted in a paradigm-shifting new workflow for Audouy. “I just loved the control I had designing these environments, and that the integrity of the designs could be consistently maintained,” said Audouy. “I could really see this as a roadmap to follow on larger future productions.”
And when the storm’s out, you run in the rain.
Pink
Put your sword down, dive right into the pain.
Stay unfiltered and loud, you’ll be proud of that skin full of scars.
That’s all I know so far.
That’s all I know so far.
Art Department Credits
- Art Director
- Mundo Enriquez
- Set Decorator
- Sandy Lindstedt
- Illustrators
- Shaddy Safadi
- One Pixel Brush
- Set Designer
- Al Hobbs
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