East Pleasant, in collaboration with Scion AV, builds a Boombox Man for Zombie Nation.
East Pleasant Director Bradonio has launched his latest inventive masterpiece in collaboration with Scion AV: Boombox Man, a celebrate-the-rhythms-of-life freak of nature who walks around with a speaker built into his belly. Bradonio puts the quirky character at the center of Level, a video he directs for Zombie Nation (who wrote the stadium anthem-favorite Kernkraft 400).
Awoken by the pulsations of Zombie Nation, Boombox Man embarks on the nonstop urban dance party that is his life. He moves through the streets of New York with a cool groove all his own, transforms a coffee shop full of incredulous skeptics into a dance club, and joins a renegade team of fellow musical mutants of Bradonio’s creation: a girl with a disco ball head, a man with lights for hands, and a fumy firebrand known as smoke machine girl. Neon-laced straight-from-the-‘80s dance sequences complement the action.
“When I was first approached with the track, I asked if we could include musical body parts, like a beer belly that played some tunes. They said yes, I rejoiced, and we made this video,” exclaimed Bradonio, whose contagious enthusiasm and endless creative output have made him a favorite of the push-the-boundaries creative set. “There’s nothing more exciting than bringing a character-based, awkward, happy, rhythmic and fantastical story to life.”
Bradonio carefully measured the alternatives between creating a practical and a CG speaker, eventually working with a team that crafted a prop belly out of a vest, silicone and a car stereo speaker. He coordinated with the visual effects team EP*Vision to add movement to the speaker during a few choice moments.
“Having a practical prop, versus solely tracking marks where the speaker would have been added in post, was a huge benefit,” explained Bradonio. “In fact, it helped drive the entire production, upping the energy on set and giving us something very genuine to work with. Random people would stop and laugh at this anomaly, and often join in, something that would not have happened if the speaker belly itself wasn’t actually present.”
The unforgettable Boombox Man is just the latest freakishly weird and wacky character to emerge from Bradonio’s bottomless imagination and seamlessly carry a production with deadpan humor. The recent ADC Young Guns honoree also brought to life an army of shadow monsters for Gramatik’s Solidified music video and created an epic adventure using action figures in RJD2’s The Glow.
Source: East Pleasant
