Short sheet · Music video · Toronto

Lookin’ Up.

A tropical island for a Barenaked Ladies video. Designed in Austin, built in a small rented Toronto studio by a local crew, shot the following day, and gone by midnight. The whole thing existed for about forty-eight hours.

Sheet no. A-209 Short sheet — Barenaked Ladies

Song“Lookin’ Up”

DateSeptember 2017

DesignedAustin, Texas

Built + shotToronto, Ontario

RoleStephen Fay — production designer

StatusBuilt, shot, struck

The whole job

48 hours

01 · Arrive Morning Flew in the day the build started. The local art crew had already sourced it all — riser rentals, lumber, sand, and plants both fake and real.

02 · Build 10 hrs Risers set at varying heights against the blue, a light shell built around them, sealed with tarps, then buried under sand and greenery.

03 · Shoot 12 hrs One day of camera. The studio was only ours for two.

04 · Strike That night Struck, swept and the studio handed back clean the same evening it wrapped. The photographs on this sheet are the only thing left of it.

The finished island set: a sand dune planted with palms and red bromeliads, weathered driftwood and grey rock forms across the foreground, a carved mask mounted on a post beside a leaning bamboo pole, all against a lit blue backing. — The set Real sand, rented palms, and a blue wall doing the work of a sky Built in ten hours · Toronto · September 2017 Fig. 1 — as built

The island from the side: the dune rising behind grey rock forms and driftwood, palms of several species layered front to back, a hot light behind the blue reading as sun. — Layering Fig. 2

Looking across the dune through a palm frond in the foreground, more palms and a hot spot on the blue behind, driftwood half-buried in the sand. — Foreground Fig. 3

A wider view of the dressed island with a pink flamingo ornament tucked among the palms, tufts of grass planted through the sand, and the studio ceiling structure just visible at the top left. — Dressing Fig. 4

Detail of the dune: three coconuts resting in the sand at the base of a palm, bromeliads and driftwood beyond, a bamboo pole crossing the top left corner. — Detail Fig. 5

The director is a friend of the band and asked me to design it and come north to build it. I had never met the crew who put it up with me, and I have not seen the room since the night we swept it out.