You guys have a seriously dark palette. And then just a few things go out of kilter with perspective, subtle things, like a background that doesn’t quite track right, or goes flat where there should be depth. You see this effect taken to extremes and it doesn’t carry the same weight. How do you know when enough is enough?
JUSTIN: This is Adam’s strength for sure. All I will say is that we use our limitations to our advantage. We’d love to go out in the jungle and shoot this stuff live action sometimes, but there’s no time and money to do it. It’s impossible these days. So by experimenting with the technique, we’ve come up with this forced-perspective, forced depth-of-field style that we would not have discovered had we huge budgets and helicopters and movie cameras at our fingertips.

ADAM: When we hit the deadline. We usually have 2 to 3 weeks from go ahead to delivery (for pre production, casting, shooting, editing, post, online, color-correct...) and have no real time to tweak anything. When you start working on these things you have to be ready because there isn’t a lot of time to fool around (and if you deliver late, no matter how great it looks you aren’t going to get more work). The whole professional side of this is rough and makes it a whole different ball game. It’s not just a matter of making great work, you have a whole world of guidelines, and politics, and schedules, and changes and sickness, and exhaustion, etc... it’s nothing like what I expected it to be. If something makes it to the screen (any screen), some minor miracles have happened to get it there.

JAKE: It has to be somewhat grounded in reality for people to buy it. I think the regular viewer can get put off by over-effected work. People only seem to complain about special effects in videos and movies when the story is bad.

JESSE: When Adam says, STOP!!!

BRENT: We usually know we’re okay when a freelance designer gets upset that we messed up his work.

You’re creating so much of your stuff in AE and 3D, do you ever just want to pack up and go shoot on location in Nepal? How would you handle having foreground/background parallax being true to nature rather than just a little off in the Saline style?
ADAM: We are constantly trying to push the envelope and do new and different work. Shoot on location in Nepal? We get to do some of that when shooting still plates for jobs, but at the moment, I think that we offer that no one else can is creating videos that are in essence hand made, each shot a collage, etc... we do our jobs in getting good performances, telling stories, etc... but what keeps us from the straight live action world is wanting to offer something that is unique and has our fingerprint. Never say never though, we’ll see what the future holds.
As far as making something more realistic and true to nature—we’re taking a month off from videos and traveling and making some 30-second spots for a certain shoe company. We have some new and exciting stuff planned that we simply haven’t had the time to experiment with (hint: legos and the white stripes... fuck, that’s been done... yarn, maybe... rats.)

JUSTIN: Amongst us we actually have a lot of live action experience. You haven’t seen it yet, but you will. We want to do some live action stuff for sure. In those cases we will just spend a hell of a lot of time working on locations, production design, props, wardrobe, etc. Because we’ll have do what takes us weeks to put together in the limited time of a shooting day.

JAKE: Shooting stills in Nepal would be awesome! Then coming back to the studio, and working with those images to create something else. Our work is so much about collage and taking things from real life and doing something different with it, creating scenes you can’t shoot in reality. Personally, I wouldn’t be interested in working in “live action.” Shoots are so boring!

JESSE: Creative lighting. Very creative styling and hair and makeup, more related to the fashion business where there is an advanced skill and expertise in making people look beautiful and different. More time to be able to plan locations, instead of having no time.

Tell me about your variety. You don’t stick with one subject matter, even getting into astronauts, but you can always tell it’s Saline. Is there a place you think you might not go?
ADAM: Not really. The beauty of this process is that we can do anything. I just hope we can continue to work with artists who will let us push the envelope. We’re dying to do more jacked up comedic spots (this has nothing to do with your question). Know anyone who wants to pay us to shoot ourselves singing in six-part harmony while being attacked by rocket donkeys? We have so much fun making retarded spots. Too much fun...

JESSE: Maybe we’ve already been there…

JUSTIN: Bitches and Ho’s videos, self-congratulatory emo-rock clips, teenybopper shit. Anything that is already out there. There are enough directors doing safe, boring, conventional videos. The world does not need more people doing that stuff.

Okay, what happens after videos—is a move to film in the works?
ADAM: Yes. We’ve got something definitely in the works. We’re at the point of trying to make this top-secret project (that we’ll call “K”) so good that it’ll be worth our two years of ridiculously hard work. It’s going to be good though. We hope.

JESSE: Actual film would be wonderful, short films and features would be a great next step.

BRENT: After videos I’m getting my own apartment!

JUSTIN:
1) Commercials
2) Some more videos when great songs come long
3) Features
4) Coke & Whores
5) VH1 Behind The Music
6) Comeback