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Behind the scenes of the Tearaway video
🕑 Added 2022-12-17 16:10:01 +0000 UTCHEADS UP! Please, watch the entire video before checking these, you won't regret it!
Hi, everyone! Thank you for the positive early reception for the latest video about Tearaway. We're still sick, so while we're waiting to get better so we can record the Audio Companion for you we thought we might as well hold you over with some neat behind the scenes pictures. This video was full of practical shots involving paper, some that might not even have looked real, so there's plenty to talk about there. It goes without saying that a lot of time and effort went into this one.
Take the thumbnail for example. I don't think a lot of people noticed, but the traditional Transparency stripes that Atoi is breaking herself through were actually made by hand, out of real paper. While it may seem a bit complicated and like something you could potentially just make digitally instead, the practical process was actually quite quick and simple. The benefit was that we got the very natural texture and shape of torn and crinkled paper without much hassle. We think that it turned out pretty well. Here's a comparison of the unedited photograph we took and the finished thumbnail, what do you think?
Next up, a little shot of Alicia sitting in the first set we used in the beginning of the video, which was basically just putting up a chair against the game shelf corner. We wanted it to look ordinary and a bit plain before unexpectedly going bigger. The idea of having two different sets in the video where one takes over the other was always present, but we wanted to make it seem a bit like we spontaneously decided to get way more ambitious out of nowhere. This was recorded on December 6th, the day before the later on-camera footage where Alicia is in a beret, so it was all according to plan.
Fun fact about the taped up game cases on the wall, that was actually done twice. Kiki just taped them up off the cuff in-between takes for these first shots, and then we had to recreate some close-ups later, which were the last shots we did for the video.
The PS Vita footage was done on the later crafting table set on December 8th, the day after doing all the speaking parts on it. Recording footage directly off of a Vita is a bit complicated, so we decided to simplify the entire process by essentially writing the first version of Tearaway out of the video early on. Still, we needed a few shots, so we had to do some top-down filming. Luckily, the game is very tactile so it's quite dynamic to film just the console being handled itself. Poor Alicia had to sit in these weird positions playing for long moments to just get a little bit of everything. These Vita shenanigans also involved getting specific footage playing on the device, which was surprisingly more bothersome than we anticipated, more on that in the Audio Companion.
The day before that, December 7th, we did the largest bulk of filming with the craft table set. We set it up the night before in the middle of our small apartment and wanted to get all of its involved footage out of the way as quickly as possible. The table ended up sitting there for a week before we could finally move it back to our kitchen where it usually sits. Please, appreciate our struggle.
(There's a little quirk in the continuity of the shots. The door to the kitchen is supposed to be closed, but when Alicia went to heat the lasagna she forgot to close it again. So the kitchen door will sporadically open and close between shots. What a trickster!)
Here's a better look at the table. We reused the little denim Kirby from the Hard Aesthetics video along with other arts and crafts material, most of which are Kiki's. The painting is a self-portrait Kiki did in 2018, it has appeared in earlier Transparency videos, but this is definitely the most screentime it has had so far. That little Heart Mummer character doesn't appear in the shot until after we've shown its papercraft schematics being printed and Alicia says "I might make some of these later", vast implications. (Although Kiki was actually the one who made it.)
(Another quirk, the 3DS power cable wasn't meant to be in the shot, but Kiki mislaid it there and noticed it too late after we had started filming, so we decided to just let it be there for all other shots.)
The goofy Alicia paper puppet was a relatively late idea for the video. We had joked around with the concept when brainstorming odd fourth wall breaking shots in the early stages of writing, but decided it would be too much work. However, we changed our minds days before filming and ended up making a little silly hand-puppet for the chapter 4 parts, primarily to reflect the mood switch more. Kiki had to scramble around figuring this out on short notice, the hair was extra tricky and needed some workshopping, but the finished thing looks pretty good and funny.
Lastly, Atoi. Her creation and treks into nature were filmed all the way back in August with the expectation of the video dropping around September-October, which absolutely didn't come to pass. We needed her ready for some summer shots, though, so she was made in a long and exhausting night right before Alicia travelled to her parents where the garden shots of the ending were made.
The forest shots were taken at Waldemarsudde in Stockholm in August as well. Here's a picture of the place where the closing shot was done.
We love Tearaway very much and have wanted to make a video about it for years. It's one of those OG Transparency concepts that was in our planning document from day one, so this was a long time in the making. We always knew we needed it to end with us making Atoi, and that it had to be emotional. We're glad it seems to have been received that way, and we're taking the message and our conclusions of Tearaway very seriously. The papercraft Atoi is now something that's just gonna be around from here on out, although probably not more than sitting on a shelf in the background. We might even make a little game out of trying to sneak her into every video somewhere.
Oh, and we almost forgot. The title card intro to the video! Kiki was very sick at the moment and couldn't take any proper pictures, but here's a little in-between to show how it was all just a bunch of paper on a table all along. What fun!
