Hike deep into the Andean jungle, take a seat with a shaman and a swig of his magical Ayahuascan nectar and you might be transported into a landscape much like the fluorescent psychotropic world of Fauna. And if that’s not a realistic journey get out the UV paint and turn on their music video for “Para Mi”, the first video off of the unreleased Manshines (ZZK Records), directed by Javier Lourenço and Lucas Bottero and his ample production crew at Flamboyant Paradise.

The entire video process (from the phone call from ZZK directors El G and Villa Diamante to the final edit) was a full year of production. With collaborations from a ton of ZZK Crew, friends and artists, Flamboyant Paradise has brought to life a futuristic tropical paradise that is the only possible imagery one could pair to Fauna’s energetic single.

We asked Javier to recount the entire process from beginning to end, this is what he had to say:

We were really glad when Grant and Diamante (partners of ZZK Records) called us to create the Fauna video.

Fede and Cristian wanted to talk about a psychedelic journey, a place with lots of things flying: they told us about Shamanic visions and dark rooms with floating things. In order to respect the idea of the boys, we started to think about those worlds, to investigate the Ayahuasca culture and other Shamanic rites and how we could represent those visions.

We can define the video as a surrealistic and Shamanic journey around a psychotropic world where the neo-Andean reminiscences are superimposed on the Ayahuascan psychedelia.

So we thought a video as a sum of different moments. We knew that the project was quite ambitious and that we needed the help of several friend artists and collaborators to take part in the project. Also we did not want to bring up just one aesthetic. The video is a collage of moments. The idea was that each of those parts or moments could have the surprise effect and work like a module in itself. Is there a logical explanation of this video? Today we think the answer is “no”. It is just a visual trip.

We also wanted to include an entire ZZK crew in the video: Chancha, Remolón, Diamante, El G and Nim. It was hard to convince Chancha to be the “head” of the train but finally he accepted. A day before the shooting of the video we were talking with El Remolón as the possible replacement for Chancha.

The Chancha-train, the Tronian landscape recreated in video mapped mountains of shaving foam, the plant-car (created by Pablo Harymbat aka Gualicho), the clip part that was shot in UV light with the colorful jumpsuits in the Neo-Andean geometry style of the Fauna that were created by Mariana Meteoro.

The part that was shot in UV light was used as a teaser of the video. We added a bit of post production: a star-glow effect in the suits. The motion graphics: designed by Nasaworks and the animation of Bestiapeluda Studio. Also the Shaman appears holding the pineal (a neo-minimalist representation of the gland) and shooting cosmic rays that bestow power to the Fauns. Lorelai, the Shamanic goddess, endured four hours of body painting and almost nine hours of shooting. We would like to thank her for the good vibe and incredible attitude and willingness to work.

Then, the styling, the make-up and the wardrobe of El G, Diamante, Campeón and Chancha were created by Jazmín Calcarami, who apart from designing her own outlandish outfits, was in charge of the body painting of the Shamanic goddess: Lorelei Portas. Tranqui Yanqui was in charge of the super tropical suit of Remolón and Loana Flores designed the stunning esoteric outfit for Nim.

All the costumes share one concept in particular which is the fringe: we used fans a lot in the shooting and we wanted to have lots of fringes and hanging cloths. We were inspired by the eccentric catch wrestler of the 80s, Randy Savage (Macho Man) who used to fight Hulk Hogan and also by the Ukukus of the Peruvian floklor.

The part when ZZK surfs on ironing boards in the middle of a Kundalini space is one of our favorite moments of the video. The boards were designed by Fede Calandria, the background by Ale Rodríguez and the monster that attacks the crew was a design of Diego Agasso.

Then it is time for a whole mushroom section where the Fauna walk through a kind of shaving foam desert mixed with video mapped polyurethane with fluorescent touches. After the psychotropic trip, they go back to their plant-car to continue with their journey.

If there was something missing in this video, it was the mysticism and the international presence so we summoned La Tigresa del Oriente who is “the” star on Youtube. She finishes the video off as the Shamanic Tigress.

The process of the complete video lasted more than a year. Many things happened during that time: there is no doubt that the saddest and irreparable one was the death of Fede who was half of the Fauna. But we all cheered ourselves up to keep on working on the post-production of the video because Fede Catar_sys would have liked to see it finished. It was pure chance that we had not produced the shots of the scale models with the video mapping when Pablo Colella edited the material. That same day when we were working on those shots, we found out that Fede had died in Bello Horizonte.

We want to dedicate this work that took us more than a year in loving memory of Catar_sys and we want to thank all those who collaborated in one way or another. And also thanks for the great amount of material of different artists that was not included due to the edition. Sorry and thanks to them too.