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MGMT 'When You Die' by Mike Burakoff & Hallie Cooper-Novack

David Knight - 14th Dec 2017

Alex Karpovsky (from Girls) is a bad magician in the new MGMT video, hated by his meagre audience for his terrible tricks. And he's stuck in a Groundhog Day-style loop. Maybe he's dreaming - or dying? Because then the world changes, with new hidden, and frankly horrible depths, as he falls onto the operating table surrounded by surgeons.

Mike Burakoff and Hallie Cooper-Novack's video for When You Die employs custom-built software Glooby to create the hallucinogenic, nightmarish transformations of the real world into something infinitely varied. A world made of flowers, or the blue Cheerios he eats for breakfast, or a Grand Canyon composed of leering faces, and then skulls. It's a version of 'style transfer', a technique created in the AI community to apply textures and tones from one image to another, and went overground this year, with a Facebook app.

Tech site The Verge says style transfer is now a little bit passé, but this video makes it "look fresh once more." For the rest of us, who have no idea what style transfer is, it's amazing, weird, and just a bit creepy. Perfect for MGMT.

David Knight - 14th Dec 2017

Tags

  • Narrative
  • Surreal
  • VFX
  • Style Transfer

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Credits

Production/Creative

Director
Mike Burakoff
Director
Hallie Cooper-Novack
Producer
Lucia Pier
Producer
Jamie Dutcher
Production Company
King Drippa
Production Company
Daughter & Sons
Executive Producer
Adam Kurland
Executive Producer
Matt Wyatt

Camera

Director of Photography
Steven Breckon

Casting

Lead actor
Alex Karpovsky

Editorial

Editor
Max Goldblatt

VFX

VFX Supervisor
Jamie Dutcher

Misc

Titles
Benjy Brooke

David Knight - 14th Dec 2017

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