Bringing together the usually separate directorial and FX artist sides of his work, LA-based filmmaker Tim Hendrix (last seen on DN here) sends Mothica on a roller skating trip of the light fantastic in music video Crossfire. Watch the gravity defying roller action below, after which Tim tells us how an extended delivery timeline provided the necessary space to give his VFX chops full reign.

As a director, I’m mostly known as a guy who does low-fi comedy. As an FX artist, I’m mostly known as a guy who does glossy beauty work and photorealism. And I’ve always wanted to combine these two opposites and prove that I could direct take my directing work in a more polished, tangible direction. But without the track record, no label was ever gonna give me the budget necessary to do this on the usual three-week timeline. So when my friend McKenzie (AKA Mothica) hit me up about doing something with a low budget and with several months to do post, I figured this was as good a chance as any to fill that gap.

The entire video was illustrated and pre-vised ahead of time, which in my opinion is a necessary thing for any greenscreen video! From there my pre-vis animations were converted to an actual shotlist and schedule and shot against greenscreen.

I hope to never see or be within ten miles of a greenscreen ever again.

Then over the course of a few months, I slowly made that footage look like the pre-vis on my ancient laptop. I hope to never see or be within ten miles of a greenscreen ever again but I’m very happy with how it turned out and happy to see it out in the world.

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