Union’s Nicholas Wayman-Harris Cuts 30 Seconds to Mars ‘Kings + Queens’ Music Film

Editor Nicholas Wayman-Harris of bicoastal Union, whose music video credits include Radiohead’s Grammy nominated groundbreaking “House of Cards”, is keeping things interesting with his latest effort, “The Ride.” The 8-minute film is inspired by the single “Kings + Queens,” and provides a unique platform for the launch of “This is War,” the highly anticipated new album from 30 Seconds to Mars.

In the film, the band, fronted by Jared Leto, performs against the backdrop of a new dawn, as cyclists descend upon Los Angeles en masse. The riders glide in unison through myriad locations. It’s a “cycle circus” of sorts, capturing the bright lights of LA, the Santa Monica pier, and more, all beautifully rendered by director Bartholomew Cubbins and DP Jonathan Sela. Union’s in-house VFX arm, resolution LA, lent its talents to the project as well. 

The cyclists’ destination and purpose is mysterious, and the ride is brought to an abrupt halt midway through the film. To reveal more would be to diminish the eclectic beauty and power of the short.

With his deft editorial hand, Wayman-Harris transitions between shots like a seasoned cyclist, weaving from daylight to darkness, crowd scene to solo shot, and motion to stillness, without ever hitting a bump in the road.

Tech Talk, from resolution Senior VFX Supervisor Todd Iorio:“Shot on RED, Canon 5D, Canon 7D, and XDCAM, ‘The Ride’ required us to operate with different frame rates, workflows, etc., and each format has its own unique quirks. For instance, the RED works best in the Avid in a 24fps project, while the Canon 5D shoots only 30p, the 7D was shooting 24p, and on the XDCAM different frame rates were shot for speed effects to be done in post. Our delivery format was 1080i, which was a real godsend because we could use some tricks that you can’t get away with in 24p, like removing pulldown for speedups and running 24frame footage at 30p. It also solved the now rampant problem of what to do with the 5D footage, which is 30p.

This project was one in a steady stream of broadcast work shot on the Canon cameras. We’ve experienced a total sea-change in expectations of image quality for final product. The ‘Is film better than digital?’ war has totally ended as far as I’m concerned; this camera is heavily compressing footage and everyone seems to absolutely love it regardless!

Once we got the edit together we had to deal with post and color. We finished in Flame and had to be really careful about lining up the cut, with so many sources there are lots of opportunities for error. Fortunately, because the guys at the beginning of the pipeline did their jobs right, we had very few problems toward the end.”

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Production Company: Hello and Company
Producer: Melissa Larson
Director: Bartholomew Cubbins
DP: Jonathan Sela

Editorial: Union
EP: Michael Raimondi
Producer: Joe Ross
Editor: Nicholas Wayman-Harris
Asst. Editor: Nathan Cali

VFX: Baked Goods and resolution LA
VFX Supervisor: George Loucas

VFX Artist: Evan Guidera
Telecine: Company 3
Colorist: Dave Hussey