MEDIAMAKING: Mind Altering Experience Taking a Psychedelic Trip with Kiki and Her Sports-Playing Friends

Bringing a non-linear editing OG into HD with a new look while encouraging and embracing creative criticism to find the best direction.

“Just needs a few 80s visual effects.”

Though I was technically alive then, this single text request from the first round of first edit feedback on my band’s latest music video did not initially trigger a particular look for me (that would come during the in-person review session later that day). Instead it made me think about the most culturally post-production tool of the time: The Video Toaster.

Digital cinema film students/makers of yesteryear fondly remember the first popular publicly available non-linear editor provided. Beyond just the incredible amount of access it unlocked for them (in particular the independent and prosumer filmmakers) I feel confident this was in large part due to its transitional wipes and overlay FX being relatively powerful and capable of inflicting a severe yet memorable look that eventually made its way into the popular commercial lexicon of cinema. These few wipes that generally worked (and worked, and worked) were and remain near universally laughed at even as they changed our visual landscape and encyclopedia. The rest of the mostly outlandish (and visually interesting) wipes remained behind the scenes to entertain the editors and post crews who got to interact with them. There are some actually excellent transitions there (the water pour in particular is so clean), but by far the most famous ones are then the ones utilizing actual humans; in particular the beautiful woman whose real name became the shorthand for the entire transitions package: Kiki wipes.

It feels appropriate to call Kiki Stockhammer the face of the Video Toaster and its company NewTek, both for her 35 years as their “Technology Evangelist” extending well beyond the lifetime of the Toaster and for her literally being the most visible and memorable of the actors used to create some of Video Toaster’s most infamous wipes. Even as a non-Video Toaster user her importance was mostly silently passed on to my generation of digital non-linear editors, and given how fun and exciting her and her compatriots work is its one of the more fun of the easter eggs to find in our still relatively new world of digital filmmaking history. This felt like a rare opportunity as a digital cinema film student to connect with my direct historical filmmaking peers over our appreciation for this clever, charming video FX and find an application worthy of her reputation.

Using the original footage I went about altering it so Kiki could break her 4x3 wall and enter the world of 16x9 HD. At first I’d intended to replicate the entirety of the wipe, but after gearing myself up for the challenge I found instead the FX of her walking over the main show as a shadow figure running over the shot was a better blend of attention grabbing without taking away from the primary focus of the shot. The fun and whimsy of this felt right immediately, and achieving this just as I’d completed the first cut made for the perfect time to bring the team in for review.

The first cut of the music video did not have any of the psychedelic color FX that defines it prominently now, and only featured Kiki doing single basic wipes (which had taken “enough” time to accomplish). It got generally positive acceptance from 50% of the project stakeholders and silence from the rest, with just the one note about the 80’s FX.

I knew it wasn’t that finished, and was specifically lacking something/s but didn’t yet know what. From personal experience, passive acceptance from the group rather than agreement is not the optimal ending spot for something communally creative. Setting aside my insecurities over being “right” or having done something “wrong” I probed for the underlying issue, which lead to the necessary direction from what was “missing” from that cut. By the time we were done I’d summed it up into 3 major changes:

1. The biking footage looked too similar to the rollerblading footage from our first music video, which also originally drew questions of being too redundant during its first edit. Then the issue was a lack of additional footage/resources, which led us to utilize at the time very new AI technology to rotoscope animate our live footage in a fashion akin to tie-dying our footage with A Scanner Darkly versions of various popular animation styles. To be clear, our budget would have never allowed us to do anything remotely close to this and I know from having done hand rotoscoping before that even the most simple animated cutouts require great skill and time. I am proud of what we did to complete that video and how it turned out. Especially with the live action filming, which is actually us and our skate crew hanging out pre-show after it had just rained (injuries and fun were had) and then up into our first public show that’s also featured in the video together, and also how we used AI technology to augment that real life footage in that situation to help us create something stronger than what we’d originally made and ultimately tell a better story about what we were saying with that song (“we’re all f***ked, but we’re still making plans”.)

   As a professional creative I understand the ethical questions using any kind of generative AI within the confines of traditional production (especially within the general zeitgeist’s consideration for what is generally considered valuable/of note). Ultimately I felt our transparent use of the technology to expand our live-action footage beyond our resources was closer in line with the most famous example of film technology critically maligned for being ahead of its time: Tron. Denied its chance at an Oscar because its technology was considered “cheating” mixing its computer and hand-painting workflows into its final product, in that case the world moved on to adapt Tron’s FX creative direction and an evolving automated workflow that empowers artists today to create beyond their individual time and resources. For us, the additive benefit presented transparently and with connection to the video’s song and narrative felt like a good use case for this new technology, so we went with it. I have also always felt a little uneasy about it, and ultimately am even more proud of the alternative all-live cut I was able to make once we acquired an additional year of show assets. They’re both great videos that I believe respectfully honor their original sources and stand on their own merits. I also personally find it easier to be proud of my art the more I’m directly connected to creating its assets versus relying on what already exists.

   One of the biggest changes we work with as modern creatives versus our historical counterparts is that what we create with now often goes beyond the tools and resources that naturally exist to include 1:1 recordings of original creations whose history extends just within the current unbroken popular culture for over a century. The precedent for this itself goes back now over half a century. Much of the music, graphics, and web design worlds’ creative expansion (and uniformity) has been built on previous 1:1 copies and templates. Does the additional degree of automation of these existing templates and libraries fundamentally change the artistic process and/or the final value as a piece of art? Is there a set of applicable guidelines that allows us to assess things like this on a situational basis to the best of our ability given the existing accepted, new, and developing perspectives? For the latter I believe the answer lays with ethics, and like all ethics it implores us to be better equipped to deal with all aspects of it along with the cause and effect it has on the world around us. Even without a clear answer to what we are looking for, knowing the differences between what we are working with and what is and is not comparable provides perspective and tools for us to develop a more concrete understanding to shape the world and its outcomes for ourselves and our communities.

   
   For this music video coming off the last one I knew I didn’t want to use any FX that weren’t “natural”, in that they had to have already been seen and accepted by general society. Even in developing something new, I wanted it to feel comfortable and familiar. That was what led me to Kiki in the first place, and ultimately it led to my new overall direction for executing on our drummer Zack’s game-changing suggestion for something “more psychedelic”. It became immediately clear in my head from the moment he said it what I would do, and I used it to help clarify the original request for “more 80’s” from guitarist Jen, whose further description rounded out the idea for the video’s 80’s psychedelic rock feel.
   
   From there, it was relatively straightforward to execute the look and immediately reap the rewards of a strong and intentional FX done consistently from start to finish. Kiki’s shadow evolved into inverting the colors behind her, elevating the overall look into a significantly more vibrant color palette that also enhanced the overall L.A. feel of the video which is big for us as a DTLA band whose music intentionally vibes with a lot of the the historic local sounds. This was a big improvement to the video from the jump, and made dealing with the additional resource-strain on my machine much more palatable.

2. Our band footage felt too similar to the recently released upgraded live-action Round and Round alternative music video (mostly because I’d re-used two of the shows’ footage featured in it).
   
   This was funny to me at first because that video only recently had acquired enough band footage to create this “issue”, but being open to change paid off. It led to me unearthing the very last unused live footage of us performing the song, which ended up becoming the master performance footage for the music video.
   
   I’d originally written it off for being too static and the lighting not captured brightly enough for what it is. The new color FX flipped that on its head; suddenly that real lighting was realized brilliantly, which brought an electric new feel to the entire video. That footage ended up being the difference maker, and it made me even more grateful to have made the effort to film it when we did.

3. More Kiki, specifically requested by Zack to break the fourth wall in a creative mosaic fashion. Removing the limitations of how she interacted with the screen, coupled with the limitations of only having so much Kiki to use, led to calling in the entire squad of human wipes I had access to. Doing this after building on what I’d built so far led to an exciting conclusion of the greatest variety of new wipes all going off at once like fireworks, capping off a more succinct and narratively fulfilling Kiki experience.
   
   Zack’s only note on the final was the “sports are a bit much but totally you”, which as a creative whose look in the band is wearing baseball and basketball jerseys and an editor who prides himself on getting the very most out of all his footage was very rewarding :)

At that point with clear direction and buy in from the band (and our local supporters who joined in the meeting) it was relatively straightforward to implement the changes, build a style up with the psychedelic elements developed with everybody’s input and match it to the energy of the song’s ebbs and flows to create our big ending.

I’m incredibly excited with how it turned out as a director/editor/band member, feels like the birds have flown!! Fun way to memorialize my first CicLAvia too. Having spent years wanting to go, dating back to college in Chicago biking around the city dreaming of going to the local one there, it felt good to check that bucket list item and be rewarded with an incredibly strong present and increasingly fun lasting memories.