Ivan: The whole video is a celebration of African-American culture.
It’s all these really well-known people doing quite normal family activities.
There was a list of what Donald wanted to see and in order.
It was up to us to figure it out how to connect all those things.
Justin: I got the
description of how people should look, but he also gave me free range.
But he know the type of artist that I am, I like to do things to get under people's
skin.
I was asking him, "Am I allowed to go all the way?"
He was like, "Nah don't go too far."
So I kept it pretty tame.
Ivan: Really wanted to suck the other hues out of the palette.
So it's basically orange and pink and red and really capture that hazy polluted feel
which is something Donald wanted to see.
Very early on, I decided I wanted this one-point perspective where you got your vanishing point
here, and everything originates from there.
You're not revealing what's ahead of him to the audience.
So it's revealed as Donald sees it.
But yeah, Donald, he wanted to be kind of expressionless.
One of the notes from Donald was ‘Batman: The Animated Series’, the 90s cartoon.
He really liked that.
Donald also wanted the theme to feel like it was set at the magic hour, kind of sunset.
So I told them what they should look up to mimic that is a old cartoon movie by the name
of ‘Bebe's Kids’.
Ivan: So this is Nicki Minaj and Travis Scott.
Justin: With a lot of my designs, I try to keep them up-to-date.
What I noticed online, a lot of people was confused about “Who is this?"
"Who is that?” and it’s like you know, my job is to keep it up to date.
Like with Nicki, it’s kind of hard to do that with women, ‘cause women are constantly
changing up their look.
So with the women in the video I tried my best to go with their best looks.
Ivan: This is Kanye West and being hugged by Michelle Obama from behind.
She kind of comes out of the shadows in this unexpectedly creepy way.
Justin: At first, the decision to make him big like that, it wasn't–didn't really want
to offend him or something, but I mean, if he gonna do that, might as well put him at
his worst.
You know?
Show them at their worst and show somebody comforting them.
‘Cause he was obviously going through a lot at that time, and the way I perceive it
is you need love from the right people in that home.
This right here is Beyoncé.
I chose this style of Beyoncé because like I said it looked like a banging look.
In the brief, it said to put Fredo on her shirt.
You know, a lot of people don’t know who Fredo is.
I was surprised but I thought a lot of people knew who he was ‘cause you know he rolled
with Chief Keef.
So I think a lot of people, I’d seen a lot of people online was saying, “Who is Fredo"
"Santana on her shirt?”
Ivan: It definitely seemed like a lot of people through this section are particularly important
to Donald.
So, his idea to put a lesser known artist on the biggest recording female musician in
the world obviously means something.
Justin: Yeah, and all this is basically, the way he's explaining is basically a daydream
that he's having.
'Cause in the video, he closed his eyes during the chorus and just daydream, basically reminiscing.
Ivan: So, this is Shannon Sharpe.
My theory is if you listen to the lyrics of the song, it's about climate change.
And I don't know it's interpretations, but people think Donald has created this world
with all these celebrities doing things that are pretty mundane, and that's what everyone's
going to talk about.
But the real song is about something different, something much more arguably important for
the planet.
Justin: But if you look closely to it, right here you look at the colors, we already assume
who it is.
XXX.
He recently died and is melting.
I see it as a symbol of somebody passing, like when ice cream melts, time's running
out.
Time ran out for him unfortunately.
Justin: In the black community you have a lot of drunk uncles.
Older black guys that want to show off and dance and the main line to use is, "You don't"
"know how to do this, young fella."
And then you have that one little cousin, which is Wiz, he want to show that he can
do the same thing too.
Ivan: Yeah, so originally in the brief it said that these guys were doing the Electric
Slide.
I was in the wrong state of mind when I read that in the brief, 'cause there was all this
people playing building blocks, people up a tree, and I was like a slide in Australia
is like a “slippery dip” we call it.
Like, you know...like that.
Justin: I said keep it to yourself but I just exposed him by accident.
Ivan: You better not tell anybody that.
That makes you look so uncool.
Justin: Knowing who’s who, like with JAY-Z, it would've been just corny.
You know what I'm saying?
Just put him with the NY hat on or whatever.
So this is one of your examples of keeping up-to-date when you look at Wiz Khalifa's
up-to-date.
Snoop, up-to-date.
'Cause a lot of people didn't know who this was at first.
'Cause they used to seeing Snoop in a certain way.
A lot of people not used to seeing him in his dreadlocks and all that.
Obviously, off the bat people knew who this was, Diddy and Dre and Gucci.
But these were the two that people were confused about.
Ivan: The way I see animation is it's kind of the purest form of film making because
you're starting with nothing.
You can't just point a camera at a building and absorb that architectural information
that somebody else has labored over.
You have to make decisions and draw it.
Justin: My interpretation of it, because you know the video basically came out the end
of summer, it's just a cap off to the summer.
That's why it's taking place during the sunset and at the end of video he goes in the house
and that's the end of summer.