I was contacted by the guitar pioneers over at Fender Music to create a series of videos promoting their latest line of guitar effects pedals. Working with a small team, we created an audio testing facility where the pedals appear to burst into practical effects representing their auditory style. We filmed the videos on a CRT screen and stylized them to look like archived footage from a government testing facility. It was an honor working with my friends on all the in-camera effects, special thanks to Brittnie Diamant, Liz Caputo, Akhil Bhatt, Eliott Wong, Cody Samson, Zach Verbeck and Jorge at Different Fur Studios.

The premise of our promo series focuses on a secret government audio testing facility where Fender has been experimenting with guitar pedal effects. We created several environments to look like rooms around the facility. The master room features a massive mixing board located at Different Fur Studios in San Francisco. We shot several angles of Eliott interacting with the mixing board in his full-body sterile suit. Thanks to the studio’s LED lighting, we were able to change the room color to match the guitar pedal being featured. The second studio we shot at is Secret Studios in San Francisco, where we captured scenes of lab technicians walking down ominous hallways. It felt right to use locations that are deeply interwoven with music culture for the lab scenes. We also built a small sound-proofed environment for the pedal testing room, which involved various arrangements of 1’x1’ white sound foam panels. We illuminated the scene with two Quasar LED tube lights and a dimmable LED ring light.

The Reflecting Pool pedal is a reverb and delay unit featuring a blue finish. The soundscape it creates felt appropriate for water cymatics and the name ties in nicely with aquatic scenery. Brittnie Diamant and I loaded up a petri dish of water and taped it to a plate, which we could vibrate using a frequency generator. When we hit certain tones, the water would form into unique surface patterns. To add some dynamic movement, we illuminated the water with animated LED strips.

The Smolder Acoustic Overdrive is a pedal designed for Acoustic Guitars and gives them a warm gritty sound. We wanted to tie the visuals into the pedal’s name so smoldering embers felt appropriate. Brittnie Diamant and I burned several different formations of steel wool on a motorized lazy susan using a blowtorch as our catalyst. By arranging the steel wool in certain patterns, we could make it appear to expand from the center or wrap around the camera lens as it burned.

The MTG:LA pedal is a tube distortion unit that has a hot 80’s crunch to it. In reference to the old power metal aesthetic of Judas Priest, we wanted to create a visual style with aggressive spikes like metal studs. I worked with Cody Samson, Brittnie Diamant and Liz Caputo to manipulate ferro fluid in various ways to create our heavy metal aesthetic. We moved a magnet below the fluid to give it life and illuminated it with animated LED strips from Blinklabs. We added red india ink to the mixture using a syringe, which created a network of reaction diffusion patterns within the ferro fluid.

The Trapper has a classic fuzz pedal sound and our concept revolved around the pedal trapping frequencies with magnetism. Akhil Bhatt and I used magnets to manipulate iron fillings and iron oxide powder, which resulted in several organic patterns. We tried several types of magnets ranging from handheld neodium cubes to large speaker magnets. We also arranged the iron fillings inside a cardboard tube and on an acrylic panel with a grid surface etched into it.

The Compugilist pedal is a combination of compression and distortion, so we went for a visual treatment that would represent high impact. I bought a cheap monitor and smashed it in several placed with a hammer. By pressing on various parts of the screen with my hands, I could control the liquid matter within the screen. Running different video content through the broken screen also yielded new glitch variations.

The Pour Over Envelope Filter creates an organic wah-wah sound, so I worked with Brittnie Diamant to create liquid painting sequences that would match the undulating audio effect. In reference to the name, we poured paint onto black canvas to create psychedelic patterns that move past the camera. Brittnie combined the latex paint with various varnishes and WD-40 to create cell patterns. She used a blow torch to burn away the WD-40, which added an extra level of organic movement to the paint.

The footage was re-filmed on a 13” sony trinitron CRT television to give it an archived security camera style. Security camera overlays were added to the corners and several boot-up screens were added before and after the testing sequence. The entire sequences were processed through analog glitch hardware created by Tachyons Plus. I used their module The DreamWeapon to create several transitions and unique textures, which I combined in Adobe After Effects for the final look.

Director:  Peter Clark
Creative Director: Joey Manfrey
Client:  Fender Music Instruments Corporation
Guitar Shredders:  Zach Verbeck, Elliott Wong
Sound Design & Composition: Peter Clark
Cinematography & Animation: Peter Clark
Liquid Magician:  Brittnie Diamant
Magnetic Powder Pusher: Akhil Bhatt
Ferro Freaks:  Cody Samson, Liz Caputo
Lab Technicians:  Elliott Wong, Zach Verbeck, Cody Samson
Special Thanks: Different Fur Studios & Secret Studios