A new user-created music video for Lily Allen’s hit The Fear directed by Caswell Coggins has been launched to promote new XBOX 360 videogame Lips Number One Hits, following the teaser TV ad that played during the X Factor Live Final in December. It’s a crowd-sourcing vid – but with something extra special going on.

The video features lots of ordinary people from around the UK singing The Fear in special Lips singing booths – but then each individual contributor becomes part of a video grid, which then forms itself into a single video image of Lily herself. The look is familiar because its been done before with still images – but never before with video.

The solution involved Caswell and Global Radio, who have created the campaign for their client XBX 360, working with creative technologists The Rumpus Room to bring the ordinary folks together with Lily, make a mosaic image – and then to take that idea on a vital step further.

Listeners of a number of Global Radio stations and the general public were involved in a nationwide XBOX 360 bus tour and filming in multiple mobile studio booths set up on UK streets, shopping malls and nightclubs. Then participants were able to see themselves online on the ‘Sing with Lips’ website as their performances went live.

With all this singing booth footage, together with Lily’s own performance of the song, Caswell and producer Phil Tidy worked with the Rumpus Room who provided the technical innovations to realise the project. It took a whopping four months from inception to delivery of the TVC (played out on the final ad break on the Xfactor final) and then the full promo – utilising Final Cut, After Effects and Rumpus’s bespoke programming that sorted the 2500-plus video files of the public performances into the moving mosaics that are present in the films.

The final result is so seamless it’s easy to overlook this is a groundbreaking execution of a strong concept. “It’s very exciting to create something that manages to retain such a genuine and uncontrived feel around it,” says Caswell. “The ability to unify so many fantastic contributions from so many different and varied individuals in such a short space of time, all under one central idea and fulfilling the brief is great.”

Tom Roope of The Rumpus Room says, “I feel we have really harnessed technology to create an exciting and engaging vehicle for the British public to really be part of the music and media that they love, creating something that is really greater than the some of its parts.”

The music video will join the teaser TV on the Lips/XBOX 360 hub, which also includes lots of behind the scenes videos.

Lily Allen
The Fear (Lips Number One Hits version)
Client: XBOX 360
Agency: UniversalMcCanns
Production Company: Global
Director & Creative: Caswell Coggins
Representation : Crossroads Films/OBmgmt
Technical and Creative Realization: The Rumpus Room
Producer: Phil Tidy
Post Producer: The Rumpus Room
Post Production Lead: Marcus Lyall
Software development: Field.io
Location Film Units: Global
Offline Editor: Seb Duthy
Grade: Rushes + Marcus Lyall
Sound Post: Envy
Sing With Lips website created by Real Time Content