Mirada Studios was honored with a Moonman for Best Visual Effects at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards held Sunday night at Brooklyns Barclays Center for its work on Capital Cities Safe and Sound music video. Directed by MThs Grady Hall, Mirada Creative Director Jonathan Wu executed visual effects and post-production for the almost 4-minute video that was envisioned by Hall as a vibrant celebratory mash-up of wildly different dance styles.
Wu said, This is definitely a team win and could not have been done without the involvement of every single artist on the credit list. The production was run-and-gun with a fast turnaround so we handpicked the best of the best. Each shot features VFX and our team effectively and efficiently stayed true to the era, telling an interesting and artistic story that came together quite nicely.
Filmed entirely in the historic Los Angeles Theater, singers Ryan Merchant and Sebu Simonian kick off the dance party in the Safe and Sound video with Fred Astaire-inspired moves that trigger an influx of other dancers and props from varying eras. Acclaimed choreographer Mandy Moore worked with over 70 dancers to create more than 40 unique dance sequences that each capture a precise historical time and style.
For the videos post-production wizardry, Wu guided a small team of Mirada compositors through more than 80 visual effects shots, including head replacements, complex animations, stock footage integration, transformations, and retro-inspired visual effects and color treatments ranging from black and white silent film influences to psychedelic visuals. Tools used include Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Affect Effects with various plug-ins, The Foundrys NUKE, Autodesk Flame and Adobe Final Cut Pro. An immense amount of rotoscoping and tracking was also needed for the articulate integration work for this style of visual effects artistry.
In addition to Miradas VFX and Halls guidance, the music video for the chart-topping single off Capital Cities album A Tidal Wave of Mystery was created with help from Danny Lockwood, Capitol Music Group SVP. To see the full video for Safe and Sound, visit: http://mirada.com/select-works/safe-sound
View the video at http://mirada.com/select-works/safe-sound
About Mirada
Mirada is a studio designed for storytellers. Founded by filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, and Motion Theory co-founders Javier Jimenez and director Mathew Cullen, Mirada is equal parts design studio, visual effects & animation facility, creative & technology incubator, development and production company. Mirada opened in December 2010 with narrative tradition at its heart and technological innovation as its engine. http://www.mirada.com.
CREDITS
Capital Cities Safe and Sound
CLIENT
Client: Capitol Records
SVP, Creative & Video/Producer: Danny Lockwood
PRODUCTION
Production: MTh (Motion Theory)
Director: Grady Hall
Executive Producer: Javier Jimenez
Line Producer: Buddy Enright
Director of Photography: Shawn Kim
Choreographer: Mandy Moore
Production Designer: Teri Whittaker
Wardrobe Stylist: Roseanne Fiedler
Band Stylist: Jenni Lee
Hair/Make-up: Anny Kim
2nd Unit Director: Jonathan Wu
Additional Cinematography: Ernesto Lomeli
Director of Marketing: Caroline Gomez
EDITORIAL
Editorial: Mirada
Editor: Mike Merkwan
POST PRODUCTION
Post Production: Mirada
President: John Fragomeni
Creative Director: Jonathan Wu
Executive Producer: Patrick Nugent
Post Producer: Derek Johnson
Production Manager/HR Director: Tina Van Delden
Art Director: Ash Wagers
Compositing Lead: Phil Guthrie
Sr. Compositor: Wesley Cronk
Sr. Compositor: Ryan Quinlan
Flame Lead: Tim Miller
Flame Artists: Marla Carter, Michael Vaglienty
Designers: Ashley Becerra, Jennifer Rahardjanoto
Creative Consultants: Ryan Erke, Kevin Lau
Roto Artists: Zac Chowdhury, Robert Dorris, Meredith Hook
Lead Stock Researcher: Jean Mougin
Stock Researchers: Daniel Choi, Luciano Herrera
###
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Mirada Studios was honored with a Moonman for Best Visual Effects at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards held Sunday night at Brooklyns Barclays Center for its work on Capital Cities Safe and Sound music video. Directed by MThs Grady Hall, Mirada Creative Director Jonathan Wu executed visual effects and post-production for the almost 4-minute video that was envisioned by Hall as a vibrant celebratory mash-up of wildly different dance styles.
