Pearl Jam “Retrograde” director Matt Wakely cast The Avengers cinematographer Trent Opaloch to play Greta Thunberg’s role of the fortune teller in the new short film/video. Thunberg’s face was digitally placed on Opaloch’s body, with Thunberg granting Pearl Jam permission to use her likeness, and praising the video in an email after its completition.
Wakely says in a new Variety interview that Thunberg was “the only person” he could see playing the fortune teller role, describing the 17-year-old Swedish climate activist as “an absolute stone cold hero.”
“She never had to act a frame, but she provided that emotion I was looking for. It was a huge thrill to see an email in my inbox from her saying that she loved it,” he added.
Pearl Jam members Eddie Vedder, Mike McCready, Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament, and Matt Cameron appear as characters on tarot cards in a scene which pulls back to reveal a deck of seemingly infinite size. “That speaks to the determination and the collective talent of the animators, who were filming themselves,” Wakely says.
“This video has hundreds of people who are visually shown on screen and not one of them met the other one during the making. I think there’s 140 tarot cards with 140 different real people. I have yet to meet any of them.” Pearl Jam were forced to do the video differently due to the current worldwide pandemic, being forced to shelve plans to do on set production for the video, with the Gigaton world tour also being pushed back to 2021.
