Whether working with Kanye West or Beirut, Ghost Town Media's specialty is taking on big ideas with small budgets. Most of the team members are veterans of the VFX industry, and initially their main focus was on VFX and postproduction. More recently they've branched out into production.

	From MGMT "Electric Feel"

“We cut our teeth on low-budget music videos, which taught us how to be flexible on a really tight budget,” Ghost Town visual effects producer Brandon Parvini says. “You can cheat a lot of things. We primarily use greenscreen, and we've become dependent on stock footage.

“Let's say a director wants a huge set or a wide shot but can't afford to shoot on location or build a set. Doing it with computer graphics might triple your budget, so we take 2D video and still assets to create the environment."

Using flat layers to create a sense of dimensionality is something the folks around Ghost Town like to refer to as “2-and-a-half-D.” Environments and effects are created using mostly prosumer hardware (Mac Pros with pumped-up RAM) running Adobe After Effects with a large cocktail of plug-ins.

One example of Ghost Town's world-building talents can be seen in 2008's “Electric Feel” music video for the Brooklyn-based electro-pop duo MGMT. The band didn't have the option of scouting and shooting the video—kind of a Burning Man bash on the bayou—on location, so Ghost Town brought the bayou to them. Directed by Ray Tintori, the video was shot on a soundstage by Andrij Parekh with a RED camera. There were some patches of grass, props and a fake tree to help blend the real and the unreal, but just about everything on screen—except for the people—is an effect.

	From MGMT "Electric Feel"

“We went to Shutterstock and downloaded still assets of trees and marshlands, which we then animated and cleaned up," describes Parvini. “Depending on the project, getting video footage to line up with a moving shot can be difficult, but if the shot is locked off, you can cheat it.”

Ghost Town handled all of the editing, visual effects and color correction work for “Electric Feel,” giving a stylized look to the digital set in line with the music's dreamy, ethereal vibe.

Almost 200 music videos later, this pack of freelancers has honed their process into a unique style. “We've always considered ourselves a little different,” Parvini muses. “We love things that are analog and real, a little grungy and a little dark. We love the chaos of real textures, and our process is borne out of that love.”