A couple weeks ago, we released the embedded video The Jackets, a TRON: Legacy inspired video made by a couple of our very own, talented artists here at CrankLeft. Now we have a bit more backstory about how they made the featured jackets and video. After years of wanting to do a TRON short film, and after various ideas were put off, it was a Halloween party this year that heated this idea to a boil. In their own words:
"The construction was fairly straight forward. We deliberated over several ideas, viz, tailored inset Electroluminescent (EL) tape strips running the design, laying EL tape on top of the jacket. The EL tape and tailoring ideas were both discarded because of time and money. So that left EL wire, paint, and thrift shop leather.
"The acrylic paint and jackets were easy enough. The EL wire was the trick. There are several online sellers… kind of. We found ourselves a local seller called Seattle Lumin. They gave us 60 feet of EL wire for $2.00/foot.
"Each jacket required 30 feet of EL wire. The wire was threaded through the over 250 punched holes. Some time was spent figuring how the wire would thread most efficiently. We ended up starting on one torso and following the white painted accents all the way through.
"The whole project took about 60 man hours to complete. The overall cost for the jackets and wire was about $140.
"We filmed on the University of Washington campus and surrounding area. The shots are all ad lib on location (can ya tell?). We stumbled by chance upon the changing neon wall of light. We shot on the Canon 7D, 1920x1080, 24 fps, using a 50mm and a 28-105mm lens. Editing, cleaning, and coloring was accomplished in Final Cut Studio.
"The footage was a bit dark and noisy. We processed all of the video through our trusty de-noiser Neat Video. After that the shots were good enough for correction and color grading. The neon panelling was key frame colored using Final Cut's Color Correction Filter."
Also, check out our EXCLUSIVE TRON: Legacy 11"x17" PRINT (below) available now in our MERCHANDISE section!
