NEW YORK — Barneys New York recently partnered with Elliot Kealoha Blanchard’s design and animation studio We Are Prism (http://www.weareprism.co) to create a custom video For its’ southern downtown window. The video represents Love, Peace, and Joy, and
features bright kaleidoscopic colors, animations and abstract video footage designed to reflect Barneys New York’s signature whimsical tone. The video is displayed on two 80-inch screens that play the film on a staggered loop, accompanied by an original track by Honnda, a Brooklyn-based video and audio artist.
“We've been interested in working with analog effects for quite some time,” says Kealoha. “Analog, unlike the digital animation tools that we typically use, is a process that rewards experimentation and improvisation. You'll never get exactly the same look twice.”
At the same time, the team made a conscious decision not to simply go for a throwback look. “Instead, we used CG and traditional animation as a visual seed for our analog work and ended up with a cool visual hybrid that blends digital and analog elements.”
The key piece of equipment in the analog pipeline was an Edirol V-4 video mixer, which was used in conjunction with a VHS camcorder and a vintage analog Commodore 64 monitor, allowing for nested video feedback loops and stacked analog effects. Signal was then fed back into a digital signal and boosted to HD quality.