World premiere video: Kid Infinity's "Swimming Lessons"—in 3D!

Here it is: Kid Infinity’s first 3D video. It looks and sounds amazing. This duo—of Nathan Huber (mainly synths/sequencing) and Ryan Pardeiro (vocals & more)—really shook things up a couple years ago when they fused the excitement of truly well-though out live 3D projections with their high NRG party grooves. Since then, the two have been laying low, due to the very unfortunate loss of much of their musical equipment (read the interview below).

I’m here to tell you they’ve snapped back brilliantly—and Nathan is even singing now too!

Kid Infinity’s “Swimming Lessons” is like a summer afternoon dream. See the video premiere at Pehrspace.

Hey guys it’s great that Kid Infinity is back. What have you guys been up to lately?
Ryan: We’ve been crazy busy working on starting our own company to do all of the 3D visuals stuff we do. Running a startup company is kind of crazy. Sort of the other side of the brain from the normal artist stuff. But we are working with some people from Avatar right now to design some really amazing new 3D technology that’s gonna be nuts! So things have started off really well already.

Nathan: That and trying to finish our first album at the same time. Oh yeah and we had some songs in an episode of 90210 ha ha.

Ryan: We told them we wanted to be cast in one of the future episodes as the bad boy rockers who do too many drugs and then we get fresh with one of the girls or something and then one of the studly dudes with a square jaw could punch us out and be like “take that you dirty rapists,” you know in a Clint Eastwood type of voice. I don’t know if they’re gonna take us up on that offer or not.

Nathan: We’ll need tattoos for that.

I heard that a bunch of your equipment was taken. What happened with that?
Nathan: We had a very unfortunate event happen that resulted in the majority of our equipment for live shows being… well it’s a long story but basically being stolen and us having no legal recourse. But in a way it forced us to push ourselves harder to create something bigger and better I think.

Ryan: Yeah we did lose pretty much all of our equipment to do our 3D shows. We also lost our lights and a lot of our personal equipment. It really sucked cause we had to cancel a bunch of stuff we had been working toward for months. We had some really great 3D shows lined up for SXSW and we were talking with the Silverlake Jubilee about doing a 3D show as well and losing our gear forced us to cancel. It’s definitely not the end of our 3D shows but it has made us kind of have to start from scratch in a lot of ways. That’s a big part of why we’ve been so quiet lately. But the new stuff we are working on is gonna be even better than our old show.

Caleb and Jenna in “Swimming Lessons.” All stills courtesy Kid Infinity.

“Swimming Lessons” is your first 3D video. What’s the story behind it?
Nathan: Well we had been planning on shooting 3D videos ever since we worked on Avatar but didn’t really have access to the tech till recently. A lot of 3D music videos we had seen were all post-conversion or green screen. We wanted to shoot something ourselves and make it more naturalistic.

So this is native 3D?
Ryan: Yeah—and it’s made us not wanna do stuff in 2D anymore if we can help it. 3D just makes everything look so much cooler. I know to a lot of people it may seem kind of hokey or like some used car salesman type bullshit cause so many awful 3D movies have been coming out but trust me, when 3D is done well, it’s a whole new world of displaying your art. We aren’t gonna let the guys out for a quick buck ruin this emerging art form.

How long did it take you to shoot and where did you find the stars?
Nathan: We were limited on our time with the camera so we had to shoot fast, run and gun style. We only had one day to plan schedule and shoot so the video became sort of a feelings piece. And those stars are our good friends Caleb Stone (Prof Calc) and Jenna Montgomery (Faux For Real). We actually shot the video first and then wrote the song to fit the visuals.

Ryan: Caleb and Jenna are both perfect in the vid but it was really just chance that they got cast. They were just the two friends who happened to pick up their phones when we called and happened to be available to shoot right then and there. And it’s perfect cause they look so good together. I wouldn’t want anyone else.

Is there a plot to the video?
Ryan: There is a little bit of plot but it’s really basic. There’s some romance going on but it’s pretty subtle. We actually thought it would be cool to sort of do the opposite of what you might expect from a 3D video. Rather than going for something really bombastic and in your face with things poking off the screen at you all the time we thought it would be cool to be really chill and serene. Sort of subvert assumption.

The other cast members are: Maria Rangel, Josh Crampton, Ryan Aguilar, Liz Alvarado, Andy Sherwood. David Romo actually helped us shoot the final scene and Mark Tan also helped on the main production.

How difficult was shooting in 3D?
Nathan: It can be challenging depending on ur experience and the equipment u have. This was fun to shoot. It was basically a vacation day from work. Ry did all the editing… I’m glad I didn’t have to handle that.

Ryan: It’s not as hard as I thought it would be to shoot in 3D. You definitely have to think about a lot more variables in how you set up shots and stage the actors but once you get in the swing of it it gets easier. It’s fun thinking of cool ways to shoot locations that will enhance the 3D effect. Editing 3D is a bitch.

Did you have to do a lot of digital post-production to make things look great in 3D?
Ryan: They’ve come out with some cool plug-ins that can drastically speed things up but we didn’t have any of those ha ha. So I did it the old fashioned way and cut two separate streams of video at once being mindful of every cut to stay frame accurate on each stream. I added some lens flare and whatnot here and there, you know, getting all JJ Abrahms on that shit. But you have to apply color and other effects with total precision to make sure it renders out identically on each eye. So yeah producing content in 3D is a bit harder but it’s totally worth it cause when you’re done it’s in effing 3D man.

The song in the video is awesome.
Ryan: Main thing to listen for is Nathan doing lead vocals. It’s our first release with him taking front and center on the mic. When we were writing the music we wanted to go in a more emotional place than we had really gone before and some of the vocal ideas I was trying just weren’t nailing it. Nate came up with this awesome beautiful melody and it was just a no-brainer that he had to sing it. And he sounds great. He’ll definitely be doing more of that.

Nathan: It’s been a very intense few months. We stopped working with the company we were originally working with on our first couple 3D shows and broke out on or own and that’s been an intense unexpected transition. We both lost some family members, so that was hard. I went through intense emotional loss in my personal life too, coupled with our 3D live equipment being lost. So lyrically it’s a song that is channeling my desire to cope with loss and not lose control. Less dance floor more of a close your eyes kinda track.

What’s next for KI?
Ryan: More music videos and a new 3D show for this summer. I’m saying it now so we’ll be forced to stick to it. We’ll have a new 3D show this summer.

Tell us about your album that you are working on?
Ryan: It’s been a long time coming. We’ve had so much of our time swallowed up with our endeavors in 3D and the ups and downs that have come from it that it’s taken away a lot of our time to just sit and write music. But we’ve been slowly hacking away at it for months now. We’ve got a lot of new songs and some of the best of our old ones on there.

Name five amazing, jaw-dropping things that inspire you lately?
Nathan: Rediscovering my love for the beach, Dr. Amid Goswami, our friends

Ryan: The artwork of Sven Geier, Carl Sagan’s Cosmos documentary series.

What’s on your summer mix tape?
Nathan & Ryan: Tremellow, El Guincho, of course Brian Wilson, Baths, Miami Horror, “Some Trap Shit,” Crystal Castles.

**HERE IT IS—KID INFINITY IN 3D ON YOUR COMPUTER. WOW!**