As part of a unique collaboration between Shutterstock and Sony Music, we’re pleased to present a brand new video for “Everyday People,” the timeless classic by Sly and the Family Stone. Comprised of over 130 clips from our footage collection, along with a selection of archival images of the band, the video emphasizes the powerful message of the song by playfully depicting a day in the life of humanity, finding uplifting and surprising threads of commonality across cultures.
The São Paulo-based duo behind the video, Dimitre Lima and Renan Costa Lima, are award-winning visual artists who have been involved in a wide range of inspiring and innovative projects. While tackling commercial work for clients including HBO, MTV, Coachella, and Daniel Liebeskind, both Dimitre and Renan have established themselves as influential voices in the art, design, and music communities in Brazil and beyond. We spoke with Dimitre and Renan about their work and the creation of the new “Everyday People” video.
Shutterstock: You’re both involved in such an eclectic range of design, video, and art-related projects. What initially brought you together?
Dimitre: In 2008, I was designing some titles for HBO’s Alice series with Indio San. I knew Renan, and he jumped in to assist with that project and helped a lot with the final deliverables. We then worked together for several months after.
HBO Brazil’s Alice Intro – Titles by Dimitre Lima
You define yourselves as visual artists, but have your hands in areas including coding, performance design, and typography. Is it difficult to decide what to focus on when your interests and skills are so varied?
Dimitre: It’s not too difficult, because the projects — and our areas of interest — usually revolve around a specific set of skills (and learning is always a part of our process). The more difficult thing is to explain to people what it is that we do!
Renan: For me, the fun part is discovering new ways to solve the challenges associated with a project. Normally, it’s scary in the beginning, but it’s within the process of figuring things out that we have a good time.
Commercial for Brazilian Furniture Company Dpot – Renan Costalima
What are some of your current sources of inspiration?
Dimitre: My sources of inspiration are broad, and my favorite artists are musicians. I don’t look much into what’s going on in graphic design nowadays. To cite some names in my mind at the moment: Tabua Auerbach, Kim Hiørthoy, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Steve Reich.
Renan: When I started working with video, the early stuff from Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry was very inspirational. These days, I really enjoy checking out work from people not using a computer to make things, though any sort of experimental work is always inspiring.
http://vimeo.com/8188121
Daft Punk’s “Around the World,” Directed by Michel Gondry (1997)
The “Everyday People” video beautifully merges contemporary and archival footage with some playful ’60s images of the band. How did the concept come about?
Dimitre: We started by researching the Shutterstock footage collection to see where that would lead us. How could we combine different images (whether opposite or complementary) at the same time? After this, we started working with Shutterstock to define a story. Sony sent us an entire black-and-white photo shoot of the band from the ’60s, which was great material to colorize and animate.
One of the clips from “Everyday People,” Street Dancing by benjikat
You included over 130 clips from the Shutterstock footage collection in the video. What was the process of finding the right ones for the various sections like?
Dimitre: We worked in a spiral methodology, going back and forth between developing the concept and finding footage to use, because each process influences the other. Finding the right content affected the story, which then impacted the type of additional footage we needed to include. 95% of the editing process was done using small previews, so it was great to see the quality improvement when we compiled the original HD footage.
What’s next for each of you?
Renan: I’m working on the title sequence for a movie and designing the cover of the upcoming album from Cidadão Instigado.
Dimitre: I’m finishing my Lunar Calendar Poster for 2014, preparing a talk about generative typography in Diatipo 2013, will try to finish some pre-release video filters I’m programming (featured in the “Everyday People” video), and looking forward to shooting some nice videos here so that I can become a Shutterstock contributor too!
View the “Everyday People” clipbox to explore the footage Dimitre and Renan used in the video.
