Homeboy Sandman: Men Are Mortal
with Director Pace Rivers
One of the first videos that inspired me to write For The Love was Homeboy Sandman’s “Men Are Mortal.” Despite the fact that director Pace Rivers was incredibly forthcoming and patient, I did not include in the first volume as I had hoped to track down Sandman through our mutual friend. It will definitely be in the next one.
Watch this video and try to figure out how it was shot before reading further. Please do it so you don’t laugh at how bad my ideas were.
GUESS #1: Did Sandman learn to rap his verses at 10x speed while jumping rope.
Pace: (with utmost patience) I would encourage you to take the song and speed it up to 10 times and see how possible you actually think that is? No, it's not [possible.] I mean, it's like, it's so scrambled and so ridiculous. And his verses are so fast and so tight that it's literally impossible. And it's funny, because I've gotten that from a couple people. They would be like, “damn, like, how was it possible that he did that?” Which makes me feel really good as an editor, because that's not what happened.
GUESS #2: Was there a green screen involved?
Oh, that's good to know, that actually maybe would have been easier. So some of this is like ‘tricks of the trade,’ but I'm cool with the reveal.1 People are super interested in it. So what I had to do is have him jump rope and I shot it at a frame rate of 240 frames a second. And then before the light changed at all, I had him stand still. And I zoomed way in on his face, and had him spit [his verses,] just regular real time. And then I got real nerdy in After Effects and reverse tracked his face from where he's standing still to his face where he's jumping rope. And then I took all that information and stabilized the frame with it. So basically, like, I took all the tracking information from his face when he's jumping rope and made the frame move. So if you were to watch the footage, it would be going up and down. slowly as he is, and then I tracked all that information to the one where he's still. And then I basically cut him out and faded it in. I thought it was going to be a lot easier than it was. but I ended up having to go like frame by frame to keep it really still on his face. You know, use masking techniques to make sure that it actually looked good. But it makes me feel really good that it fools people because like, that's the whole thing, right is where the concept came from. And Sand and I put our heads together on this one, which is, you know, the concept of the song is that 'men are mortal.' And he's not one, right? He's, you know, otherworldly. And so nobody could possibly do this while jumping rope, or do it that quickly.2
I honestly would have respected if he did not want to share his secret. But I am glad he did!
So few videos connect to the meaning of the song. This, to me, is incredible dope!