The 90 second long video Crow was created for MTV's new HD channel. PSYOP looked at the project almost as a visual haiku, or video installation, rather than a typical commercial.

It opens with a stark white background, three jetblack birds fly smoothly across the scene emitting a branching black energy. A sparse yet profoundly resonant musical score plays in the background. As a single bird alights on a solitary tree branch the branch multiplies into a thick, yet leafless tree. A huge flock of birds form a dense mass swirling in the sky, only to suddenly freeze against their desolate landscape and smudge into the bark of a birch tree. The birch is quickly blended into an increasingly dense forest of black and white trees, which is overrun by an even denser flock of the black birds. As the screen turns almost entirely to ebony, a few stray spots of white form a reflective gloss on the many-feathered wing of a single bird. The piece ends with the bird spreading its wings as it drops a single feather.

“We were fascinated by the particulars of this project,” says Spier. “We’ve done HD work before, but always with the knowledge that the work would also be viewed in NTSC. This time, viewers will only be seeing this in HD. We had the unique opportunity to take advantage of the technology and include detailed elements that would be very problematic to accomplish in NTSC. That’s how this spot ended up with so many thin, high-contrast lines that would buzz like crazy on regular television. We were able to actively work with these kinds of elements, knowing the resolution would support it.”

Interestingly, the luxury that allowed such intense detail proved to be the project’s biggest challenge. “When working with HD, every frame becomes insanely big,” explains Hyon. “That makes for increased render times and much slower processing, especially when you’re creating some 120 forest scenes, as we did for this. many ways, it felt like the way we worked in NTSC five or six years ago.”

Directors: Marco Spier and Marie Hyon; Executive Producer: Justin Booth-Clibborn; Producer: Lucia Grillo; Flame Artist: Eben Mears; Technical Director: Pakorn Bupphavesa; 3D Artists / Animators: Laurent Barthelemy, Alvin Bae, Todd Akita, Damon Ciarelli, Dave Barosin, Jason Goodman, Lutz Vogel, Mate Steinforth, Ajit Menon; 2D Clean-up / Rotoscope: Ella Boliver, J Bush, BeeJin Tan; Junior Flame: Jaime Aguirre; Editor: Brett Goldberg; Music: Q Department; Producer: Julie Hurwitz; Composer: Drazen Bosnjak