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LMFAO 2012

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This year the team at Wellcan was subcontracted to create video content for LMFAO’s “Sorry for Party Rocking Tour” In May we were presented with a 4 hour long audio interview of the artists and management discussing the visual approach for each song during the show. LMFAO  requested video content  that was high in energy,  humorous, and contained their retro design sense. A two week production time line began; that brought together design elements ranging from hotdog carts, bar scenes, and green zebra stripes, to pink palm trees, disco, and bikini basketball. This month we had our work cut out for us.

It was a diverse mixture of approach and style. We hired a team of six additional freelance artists to assist in meeting the challenge. While some of the techniques for obtaining the footage might have been a little less than the “industry standard,” they uncovered some colorful ideas. 

Due to the lighthearted nature of the client we were able to try some ridiculous techniques. "

How about that.. you can get paid for flinging hotdogs at glass”
— corbin thomas

We tested a lot of silly animations that we might not have otherwise had a chance to play around with. *SEE ABOVE* On day one the first thing that we tested is the concept of the dancing hotdogs and flinging hotdogs at the screen for the song, “Hot Dog.” 

 We also created content for the dance epic, “Quest,” which was an 8-minute montage of video, dance, and music. Shawn and Andre had to utilize a large portion of the first day trying to map out the storyboarded ideas the quest crew and LMFAO had outlined for us. 

The visuals for quest involved a lot of stock footage, warm colors and very little 3D so we were able to knock it out a lot easier than if we would have had to try and make everything from scratch. They wanted a large amount of the focus to be directed towards the stage and dancers and  less attention on the screens so we kept a lot of the animation minimal and shape driven.

The night before the show we hit render and  kept a watchful eye on the farm as the content baked.

At 6:00a.m. the day of the show...

 We received new audio-beds. Up until then we were under the impression that we already had the finalized version of each of the songs. This threw everything into disarray. We went into an editing frenzy and reviewed all of the content to be sure that they all timed out. We finished the last cut one hour before LMFAO hit the stage. 

The final hours, after spending the whole morning backstage in the "Green room" with our laptops, we were finally able to step out into the crowd to watch the show unfold. Too many beers and some great people watching later , Corbin was able to spend a few moments with one of the stage prop zebras.

​ZEBRA

this is how the pros do it...
— corbin thomas
corbin thomas