BABASÓNICOS - Aduana de Palabras

Compositing lead | Bitt Animation & VFX

A panther is loose in the city of Buenos Aires for Babasónicos' third hit-single from the album "Romantisísmico". Directed by Juan Cabral, who also worked in the band's "La Lanza" & "Burócratas del Amor", the single helped the album go Gold after just a couple of days on the radio.

In pre-production the decision was made to avoid working with a prosthetic tail for the main character, and go instead with an all-CG approach. This gave the director the freedom he needed to fulfill his vision about how it should look and behave according to the frontman's perfomance in camera.

The face of the panther was a superb and labor-intensive make-up job. It held very well even in close-up shots, and was further helped in post with subtle corrections in specific places like the area around the eyes, the lips, and parts of the fur around the neck that would break the ilussion under certain conditions. Protruding fangs were also painted and tracked in a few of the shots.

The job involved a great deal of rotoscoping work prior to composing the CG tail. Almost half of the music video is shown in black and white, which somehow eased the compositing process. Although the final shots at sunset proved to be a challenge when matching grain, color aberration, and blown-out edges from backlight. In rooftop-shots, multiple signs had to be covered-up.

All-in-all it was a great job where almost every shot has some postproduction work that helps this hit music video for rockstars Babasónicos flow effortlessly.

Compositing breakdown

There was a big crane-shot on a rooftop that the director felt was too shaky, so it was stabilized and reframed with a new, smoother camera-move after 3D tracking the scene.

Street-art stencils based on the music video spotted throughout the city.