A Conversation with Tomer Bahat
Tomer Bahat is an impassioned filmmaker and music video director, producer, and post-production artist in Tel Aviv, Israel.
He is known for creating lush, atmospheric, emotional videos for Israel pop singers, including his newest works for Avigail Rose and Didi Erez.
Michele Yamazaki of Toolfarm talks to Tomer about his work... from the early stages of concepting, to pitching the idea, to the challenges of shooting on a limited budget. He also shares some clever techniques in post-production.
His website, tomerbahat.com is newly launched.
Chat transcripts
Tomer Bahat: Hi Michele.
Michele Yamazaki: Hi Tomer. Thank you for chatting with me today.
MY: Tomer, you're a music video and film director, producer, visual effects artist, and it looks like you take part in everything from beginning to end. When did your fascination for film and music video begin?
TB: First, I do take care of many aspects of the production myself (especially because of budget constraints), but I have a regular crew which does a lot of the work.
TB: I have a regular cinematographer, gaffer, make-up artist, and my girlfriend (who is a fashion designer) does the styling.
TB: I got involved in filmmaking at quite a late age, around 20, after doing mainly writing in my teens. I got hooked on the Tel-Aviv Cinematheque, and made up for lost time.
TB: I started to take an interest in music videos in my second year of film school, almost by chance. I did a personal, semi-documentary project in my neighborhood, of still photography (around 5000 frames), for several months, and later edited it into a music video. The video won an award, and that started me on directing music videos.
MY: Very cool. You mentioned that you work with a small budget. What sort of tools do you use?
TB: First, I try to plan very carefully, because all the shooting has to fit into a single day (with a paid crew), in order to cut costs. I use a lot of indie-filmmaking tools, and shoot mainly with Panasonic HVX-200 equipped with a cinema-lens converter and a set of prime lenses.
TB: I almost always storyboard in advance, and edit the storyboard with the song to create a video board, to assess the length and timing of the shots.
TB: I try to use post production as both a creative and production tool - build scripts around specific post concepts, to enhance and achieve things I can't afford to create on set.
MY: Your videos look very polished, not at all low budget.
TB: There is always a compromise in music videos creation on a tight budget - I always prefer to have less shots but have them very accurate and aesthetic, and to try to make my limitations intentional - adopt a certain look and go with it, i.e. grain, bleach bypass, concentrating on one location, minimalist sets, using existing locations instead of building from scratch.
TB: On the positive side, I enjoy a lot of creative freedom because there is no tight system of production, executives, etc., and the work is very personal, one-on-one and built on trust. I always try to emphasize my personal style as a director when pitching projects by showing videos from my reel, and I do a lot of research and preparation before the pitch. I take stills, I download images from the internet, and use as much concrete visual examples when pitching.
TB: I think it's very important that the singer/band have a good concept of how the finished piece will look like in the pitching phase, and also to use images, rather than written ideas, as guidelines for the development of the lighting, costumes, set dressing, color schemes, etc.
TB: In the case of Didi Erez's video, because of the very limited budget (again...), I came up with a concept which is built around one small set (a gray cloth on a wall of a living room), two actors, and tight shots (MCU), and have them interact and convey the feeling of the song. Shifting the burden to the post work really helped in making the video, and it took me about a month of compositing later. I gave the singer the example of the Radiohead video of Thom Yorke in a water tank (No Surprises) which is also one-shot CU of the singer.
MY: What type of music videos appeal to you the most?
TB: I think that the emotional content is the most important factor for me. I can appreciate many kinds of videos, but for myself I like the ones that move me the most. We have an on-going debate here whether music videos are commercials for the song (or the artist), or something else. I take the opposite approach. I want to create art, to make something new - a creation of sight and sound, which interprets or builds upon the song to say something more. I like personal songs, which are intimate and revealing, so I can build on the emotions the singer is conveying. I also like cinematic videos - ones with stories and progression, and a broader scope. While I value performance, pop, and "cool" videos, I'm leaning more towards atmospheric, video-art and emotional videos. That is also the music I like to listen to.
MY: Who are some of the creative influences that have had the biggest impact on you?
TB: That's an easy one. I first want to recommend the directors series DVD pack, which is a compilation of the works of the most important music video directors today. I *LOVE* Jonathan Glazer - his work was a true revelation for me, and even though he's made just a handful of videos, each is unique, moving and original. His commercials are even better. I also like Michele Gondry - especially his earlier work in France, the 'simpler' clips. His later work is amazing, but I like videos which make you say "Geez, I could have done that here". I also learned a lot from Mark Romanek, who has great style. Floria Sigismondi's work is amazing, but is so unique and personal I can just admire it from afar. I also love the videos that were made for Smashing Pumpkins, especially "Ava Adore" and "Tonight, Tonight". But definitely Jonathan Glazer.
TB: I also think that it's very beautiful that in music videos you can have less direct influences - I look into still photography and painting a lot, and also try to bring something of the film directors I like into my work (Eviatar Banai's music video, which is the one I like best, owes a great deal to P. T. Anderson's "Magnolia").
MY: Are the artists usually involved with the making of the video?
TB: The artist is a major part of the process, and actually the one most involved from the client side. From the pitching of the concept, and I usually try to pitch some directions or variations so that the artist can choose what he relates to the most, through pre-production - approving the video board, clothing tests, locations, and post-production- viewing and commenting on the rough cut, online preferences - color correction, diffusion and the like.
TB: I always present my own inspiration or idea, and work with the artist from there. Very good things have arisen from the challenges and questions the artists have during the process. I think the artist has to fully understand and see the bigger picture before shooting, so he can put up the best and most appropriate performance for the script.
MY: How cool - getting to collaborate with musicians like this. What was your artistic approach in making the Avigail Rose video "Maybe"?
TB: The Avigail Rose script rose from an idea I've had for a long time, which is exploiting HD acquisition for SD delivery. That opens up much more creative possibilities than simply stabilizing or re-composing the shots. I used it as the backbone of the video.
TB: The idea was to present Avigail (for whom it's a de cut single and video) in many "personalities", co-existing in a common space. The song also talks about day-dreaming, so I tried to preserve that surreal feeling, of hovering and weightlessness, and also to give external representation for internal feelings and "moods"- to show the different personas co-existing in each of us.
MY: Can you talk a little bit about the HD to SD technique that you mentioned?
TB: If I acquire (film) in 1920x1080 HD (actually 1440x960, but let's not nit-pick), and my end delivery format is PAL 720x576, I have a bigger frame to "wander around" in. That means I can defer camera movement from the shooting to the post, and actually in this case - film static frames, and have a 3D camera in After Effects doing all the movement, thus creating a technically impossible one shot movement in post. We did some tests for that, and came to the conclusion that we actually needed more resolution, so I had two HVX-200's running in sync, one covering the entire frame and the other framing just the place where Avigail is in each room, for use in some of the closer shots, such as the opening shot.
MY: The video is just beautiful.
TB: Thank you. It took us 22 hours non-stop to film it. I crashed for a couple of days afterwards.
MY: I can imagine! What were some of the other challenges you came up against during production and post production?
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TB: The main challenge here was actually set construction - we had a carpenter build a room inside the studio, and filmed with the widest lens possible in order to enhance its size, later correcting the lens distortion in post. The room is actually quite small. We also had to simplify and cut down time on set changes, so we made a shooting plan and stapled the wallpapers on a reverse order to the order of shooting, so we could just tear down the outer wallpaper and reveal the next one under it. I also assured my (very talented) set dresser that I'll "fix it in post", so I made a Photoshop patch for each room (since it's a static frame), and cloned/blurred/added as needed. We took the same I approach to lighting. We had the light sources "burning out" (over-exposed), and took an under-exposed frame for each room, to compose over the visible light sources.
MY: No kidding. I would've never known that you shot it in that manner. That is very clever.
TB: The HVX/P2 workflow also gave as some real pains. After that, the post-production was the real challenge. I have to credit the talented people at snowballvfx.com post house, for doing the post for this music video. We divided the workload between us, and had a very talented AE artist (named Itay Greenberg) doing all the 3D camera movement, and refining it in an iterative process with me. We finished it off by grading each room to a different color palette - especially for the last shot.
MY: I must ask you about plug-ins. You mentioned bleach bypass and color correction. What are your favorite tools?
TB: I think Magic Bullet is a great tool. Having come from a Flame background, I looked for tools to replace what I knew from much more expensive machines. I found Color Finesse (bundled with After Effects) to be an astonishing grading tool. I almost never use AE's own levels and curves, and I think it's superior to the Flame/Inferno toolset in that respect. It's taken over Magic Bullet for me. What I still lack is a good tracking tool. After Flame's tracker, AE's just doesn't cut it. I've heard great things about Mocha/Mokey though.
TB: I also think the After Effects Time warp is amazing. I've used it to create a slow-mo effect throughout Ben Artzi's music video.
MY: What future plans and projects do you have coming up?
TB:I'm constantly working on new music video projects, as it is my true joy and passion. It's a wonderful place for creative experimentation. I think I have around 20 script ideas waiting for the right piece.
TB:The scene here in Israel is very small - our local music channel is only 4 years old, and with a market of 6 million Hebrew-speakers here, it's growth potential is very limited. We are, however, hoping for more involvement from new media players, such as the internet and 3G cellular providers in music video productions. I'm working on my first feature-length script, and also on some internet projects. I have also formed a creative collaboration with NYC production house - sbgnyc.com, and hope to join forces and do some work abroad. The cultural meeting and cooperation has great creative potential in my opinion, and I have some US indie artists I'd love to work with.
MY: Thank you so much for chatting with me today.
TB: This interview has been a great interest and welcome surprise for me, and I hope it will inspire others to get up and make videos themselves.
MY:I wish you the best and I hope to see your work very soon in the US.