Oscar Oboza, colorist at Nice Shoes’ Minneapolis location, recently completed work on his second music video for The Afghan Whigs. Oboza, whose room is located within Volt Studios in Minneapolis, initially collaborated on the band’s Demon in Profile video, which has a dark and mysterious tone. The new
Oriole video is much lighter by comparison, with a softer and more dreamlike look.
Amy Hood directed the video and also stars as its naïve hero, who finds herself in the middle of a cult’s human sacrifice. The video’s producer Avtar Khalsa brought in Oboza to help achieve its final look.
Oriole was shot on a mix of formats, including 16mm film, and with Sony’s F7S and Canon’s 5D. The look of the video’s clips range dramatically. Some are grainy, others are shaky and still others are overexposed. Both color and black & white footage is used. Certain scenes have the look of a video monitor. And lighting ranges from outdoor, to indoor, to candlelight, to club lighting.
“The inside of the house has one look,” notes Oboza, who contrasts it with the outdoor sacrifice scene at night. A lot of work, says the colorist, was trying to figure out where to use the dreamlike softness.
Oboza uses a Baselight system to perform color grading. In this case, he worked with the raw footage, which was sent back to the editor for assembly. His studio is equipped with a 4K LG OLED display that matches the monitors in all of Nice Shoe’s other facilities.
“It’s a labor of love,” he says of the occasional music video work he gets to collaborate on. Oboza estimates that he spent over 16 hours on Oriole — time that was spread out since the client was not attending sessions. “There is a trust factor,” he adds, noting that they let him do what he specializes in. “They are mindful of my time. I enjoy the relationship and will take my time in relation to the budget, but you try to move it along.”