LOS ANGELES — Director Warren Fu recently created a new music video for The Strokes off of the band’s latest album, "The New Abnormal". Ode To The Mets was released on July 24th and uses dream-like animation, created by eight different animators working from home during the quarantine.
Fu (pictured), who is signed with Partizan (https://www.partizan.com/director/warren-fu/music-content), is a frequent Strokes collaborator. In the case of Ode To The Mets, he takes viewers on a six-plus-minute journey through an abandoned world that shows New York during its different points in history, and the sadness that came after the Mets and their fans had their World Series championship dreamed dashed.
All of the footage was compiled in Adobe Premiere and Wu handled the initial animatic, as well as some of the final visual effects and final color grading. Adobe After Effects was used for VFX, along with Photoshop for matte paintings.
James Morr handled the arcade game graphics featured in the beginning of the video using After Effects. For Chapter 1, Ratha Nou used Maxon’s Cinema 4D to create the prehistoric setting. Then, Aaron Baker brought it into Autodesk Maya for the final lighting and rendering. An old VCR was used to create the vintage look for the tipi scene.
For Chapter 2, Wesley Kandel used Cinema 4D and then created his own custom animation shaders for the animated Times Square street scene. The school in Chapter 3 was created by Baker using Maya. In Chapter 4, Sam Mason used 3ds Max to create the toys featured, including the Big Wheels, Battleship game, Rubik’s Cube, skateboard, and action figures. The circuitry in Chapter 5 was created by Anthony Sheppard using hand drawn animation techniques in Photoshop, with compositing in After Effects. The framed photos of the speakeasy in Chapter 6 were created by Wesley Kandel using Cinema 4D, and for Chapter 7 Baker used Maya to create the underwater sequence, which pays homage to former ballpark Shea Stadium. The moon sequence that closes the video in Chapter 8 was created by Morr using Blender.