For the music video of DJ Mark Ronson’s remix of Bob Dylan’s 1966 song “Most Likely You’ll Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)” that SonyBMG commissioned to coincide with the release of a new Dylan box set, the challenge was to show the expanse of Dylan’s art over the past five decades and accurately represent the style of those eras. Showing five decades of an artist in three minutes is not easy task, especially not for one as eclectic and reclusive as Dylan.

This was even more difficult for director Rupert Jones of Draw Pictures, London, because he is a huge fan of Dylan.
“It was never going to be good enough to satisfy myself,” admits Jones. “It’s very nerve racking trying to create a piece about someone you are such a fan of and you know that he’s going to lay his eyes on it at some point.”

In the project description SonyBMG sent out there was a mention of Dylan’s career spanning five decades, which gave Jones the idea to show him walking through these different eras. The decision to shoot the Dylan character from the back was to represent Dylan’s reclusive nature, an artist that preferred to let his music speak for him, says Jones.

“It was quite difficult to come up with the look,” explains Jones. “I wanted to just talk about Dylan’s career, but the record company didn’t want to get to esoteric with it. So they wanted it to be more about eras and passing trends rather than things specific to Dylan’s life. So it became a hybrid in that respect. But it was a useful thing as well because Dylan becomes less iconic with each decade. In the early part of his career his image is very clear and visual and demarks a certain time. The Freewheelin’ (1963) look in the beginning of the video is very clear, with that early folky bit and then in the mid-sixtes when he gone electric, during the Don’t Look Back (1967) era when he’s in dressed in black with black shades and everything. And then he starts getting fuzzier. There’s the era in the mid-’70s around the time of Desire (1976) and Street Legal (1978) where he takes on this gypsy persona. From then on you can’t delineate things clearly until probably recently when he has this cowboy thing going on but that’s sort of been running for a while.”

So how did they create the different film looks to represent the technologies and styles of those decades?

“In the beginning we were thinking about trying to shoot all different formats, coinciding with the era, from Super 8 to 16 to video and trying to get all the looks in-camera. But in the end we shot everything in 16mm color negative. We did a bit of Bolex for the black and white bits.”

For a one-day shoot in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Jones reveals the key element in ensuring that same 16mm color film could suit all the many different looks.

“I learned a long time ago when I was meeting with a grade colorist and he said to me the most important thing in getting looks is that the things that you are filming are of the time and the colors are of the time, so that then you can grade to those colors and to those historic items,” explains Jones. “I think some people thought I was a bit mad because usually when directors go abroad to shoot something they insist on taking their DP with them. For this I insisted on taking my stylist with me, a guy called Roger Burton. He owns the Museum of Contemporary Wardrobe here in London. For instance the jacket that was worn by the Dylan character in the beginning was the same model of jacket Dylan wore. So he got originals of everything. So everything that is being worn is of the time.”

There are many attempts in post at creating a scratchy, grainy, weathered film like those shot years ago derived from clean crisp footage shot in the present, and most of them fail remarkably. But Rushes Post in London successfully made the examples.
Receiving the grade from the telecine house, Rushes enhanced the look in Flame adding a stuttered film effect for the ’70s flower power sections. Rushes used the The Foundry’s plug-in TinderBox in Flame.

“There’s a tool called Old Movie in TinderBox that adds saturation and makes it look like Super 8mm, adding camera shake and sproket damage” explains Rushes’ Matt Jackson. “Of course like any of those sorts of effects tools it takes quite a bit of tweaking to make it look decent so we amplified the grades and added camera shake. One of the big things to sell the old film look for the sepia-toned shots in the beginning where the whole image is cut out is softening and blurring the edges of the film. That really sold the effect.”