Production Company

Draw Pictures

One of the YouTube Music Award&nbsp;videos that dropped on March 23rd is actually two videos - a&nbsp;gender-specific&nbsp;double-bill for the DJ &amp; producer&nbsp;Martin Garrix&#39;s&nbsp;track Don&#39;t Look Down featuring Usher,&nbsp;directed by Petro, with his usual talent for charmingly&nbsp;zany comedy.It&#39;s set in a country club, in which&nbsp;posh club&nbsp;members look down upon a&nbsp;young,&nbsp;affable&nbsp;towel&nbsp;boy. All he wants is to&nbsp;get the attention of a snobby yet alluring&nbsp;lady by the pool.... And then there&#39;s the&nbsp;&#39;Towel Girl&#39; version, which&nbsp;sees a female equivalent&nbsp;just as besotted, and determined to attract,&nbsp;a handsome, Vice-reading&nbsp;guy (played by Balthazar Getty).Amusingly, the&nbsp;videos play on existing character tropes and cliché to the fullest extent and play out&nbsp;rather like the comedic narrative&nbsp;version of the sexy boy/sexy girl videos for <a href="http://www.promonews.tv/videos/2014/09/11/alt-j-every-other-freckle-girl-and-boy-versions-olivier-groulx" target="_blank">Alt-J&#39;s Every Other Freckle</a>.&nbsp;

United States

Petro

Christopher Salzgeber

Caroline Clayton

Alexander Dynan

Kate DeBlasio

Vanessa Price

Ariana Nakata

Chip Eddy

Marissa Chalwood

Las Bandas Be Brave

Dance

Martin Garrix ft. Usher 'Don't Look Down' ('Towel Boy' & 'Towel Girl' versions) by Petro 

Martin Garrix feat. Usher - 'Don't Look Down' (Towel Boy) [Official Music Video YTMAs]

Martin Garrix feat. Usher - 'Don't Look Down' (Towel Girl) [Official Music Video YTMAs]

Geeky office drone infected with dance bug leads to an Invasion of the Bodypoppers situation - but not before he pushes boulder up a mountain... 
Petro's video for Avicii's Levels is a bit bonkers, which makes a refreshing change from your average Euro pop-dance video. 

http://www.youtube.com/watchv=_ovdm2yX4MA

Chris Salzgeber

David Myrick

Tamara Brooks and Bob Brimson

Avicii 'Levels' by Petro

Avicii-'Levels'-by-Petro

One doesn't like to condone violence - but in this case we'll make an exception.
Because even though the guest vocalist in the new BPA video is actually a near-lifesize puppet manipulated in-plain-sight by Bunraku puppet-masters, he's still Iggy Pop. And you don't mess with The Ig.
This delightful video is directed by Nick Ball - who also directed the previous BPA video for Seattle, for his brother-in-law Norman 'Fatboy BPA Slim' Cook . Darkvast made the brilliant puppet who is, let's face it, arguably more Iggy-like than the guy currently fronting the <a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watchv=tEcFlyrgcUY">Swiftcover ads</a>.
And Norman supplies another Fatboy Slim-class cameo, coming off a bad second against the still-reigning bad boy of rock.

Nick Ball on making the video for The BPA feat. Iggy's He's Frank
"The first video I ever did was for the BPA track 'Seattle' featuring Emmy The Great. It showed Emmy's head broken up into cubes which turned and slowly morphed Emmy's face from one look to another. Norman Cook aka Fatboy Slim aka the brains behind the BPA - Brighton Port Authority - loved the 'Seattle' video so much that he asked me to do his next one too.
"I decided I wanted to use a puppet or puppets in the video as soon as I heard the track. Having already worked with the puppet masters at Darkvast on a much smaller project I was hungry for more puppet action. This was the perfect opportunity to go one step further and the builders of the Iggy Puppet - Jonny Sabbagh and Will Harper - were really excited about creating a twisted Iggy doppelganger.
"Norman's main concerns from the beginning were that we didn't make a happy or twee puppet video as he was keen to exploit the dark edge the Iggy vocals had brought to the music. Together we developed the concept from puppet Iggy dancing into puppet Iggy fighting with his own Bunraku puppet masters. We were given carte blanche to make our puppet look as scary, demented and deranged as possible.
"Before the shoot we watched as much footage of Iggy performing as possible and then tried to replicate it as best we could. The real Iggy loves a mic stand when he's on stage so we used one too as the base for our performance. The rest of the moves were created by simply assessing what it was possible for our puppeteers to do and what wasn't. We had a stunt coordinator choreograph the fight sequence and perform the stunt.
"The last shot of the day was the last shot of the video. Everyone was really tired and we nearly ran out of bottles to smash over Norman's head, he was really relaxed about the high number of takes we did even though we'd cut his head open. It's not as easy as you might think to be bottled by a puppet Iggy Pop."

Nick Ball

Camilla Klich

Daniel Bronks

Marek Budzynski

Kenny Gibb

The Brighton Port Authority featuring Iggy Pop’s He’s Frank by Nick Ball

The-Brighton-Port-Authority-featuring-Iggy-Pop’s-He’s-Frank-by-Nick-Ball

Following his award-winning video for Ankle Injuries and acclaimed video for <a href="http://www.promonews.tv/wordpress/wp-admin/%E2%80%9D">Knickerbocker</a> earlier this year, here comes Wade Shotter's third video for Fujiya &amp; Miyagi. Technically it could be his most ingenious F&amp;M video yet.
Apparently no computer graphics were used, and it was all done in-camera - which is somewhat hard to swallow as the band become wire block-men playing wire-block instruments in a wire block world.
Based on early Eighties computer game vector animation, the simple computer graphics really were built for real, by Steve Gallagher and his team at Block9 under Wade's direction - as he explains below.
Okay, there are a few post effects in there too...

Wade Shotter on making the video for Fujiya &amp; Miyagi's Sore Thumb
"The initial inspiration for the promo came from the idea of taking the simple visual language of early 80's wireframe/vector animation - which exists as a well known but purely digital format - and re-inventing it by building real physical wireframe structures.
"It followed that every graphic and detail should be made and shot in-camera to adhere to the same theme. Even simple background/foreground plates with no movement were blown up, painted or printed out and re-shot in studio.
"The band performance was simply shot against black with a black suit so all that remained were their wireframe exoskeletons and faces.
"The miniatures ended up looking almost too realistic in places, so it was important to include a very human element to the project which materialised in the form of 'purposefully bad puppetry'.
"The tank miniatures were simply dragged across screen with black cotton and their movements were deliberately inconsistent and jerky. To get across the 'real' nature of the promo, the wireframe models were made to look imperfect and a little wonky with unfinished edges and unsightly blobs of glue.

"Steve, the Block9 team and I worked for six days straight to make all of the props, costumes and backgrounds for the shoot. Filming took place at Block9's studio in East London."

Wade Shotter

Paul Carter

Steve Annis

Steve Gallagher

Tom Lindsay

Dan Sollis

Martine McDonagh

Fujiya & Miyagi’s Sore Thumb by Wade Shotter

Ben Unwin serves up this enjoyable, illuminating and uplifting mini-doc as part of Dido's new album's internet campaign.
Commissioned alongside several other shorts from across the globe in an ongoing project to accompany each track on Dido's new album - films from <a href="http://www.promonews.tv/2008/12/08/dido%e2%80%99s-safe-trip-home-it-comes-and-it-goes">Bangkok</a> and <a href="http://www.promonews.tv/2008/12/09/dido%e2%80%99s-safe-trip-home-films-the-day-before-the-day">Nazare</a> have been posted up on Promo this week, and all the films made so far are on the special Safe Trip Home <a href="http://www.promonews.tv/wordpress/wp-admin/%E2%80%9Dhttp://www.safetriphome.com/%E2%80%9D">website</a> - the film tackles the meaning of home via an insightful view of various British teenagers' bedrooms.
Ben explains how he managed the difficult task of actually getting inside these hallowed spaces below... And apart from anything else, in its quiet way his film helps to redress the balance with a media that delights in demonising teenagers.
As Ben shows, they can be quite sweet really. Apparently.

"What me Ben Unwin In a Teenagers Bedroom! What Were They Thinking" - Ben Unwin on making his film for Dido's Safe Trip Home film project 
"Several years ago I completed a full-length documentary Well Done Now Sod Off about the anarchist band Chumbawamba which (although an exhausting experience) won several awards and gave me the taste for making documentaries whenever possible.
"Through fatherhood I have watched the way that my daughter has customised her bedroom to reflect her personality and this seemed like an interesting starting point with which to jump into the teenage world. When the Dido project came up it seemed an ideal time to take this idea and experiment with putting it to music.
"I had noticed that it had seemed to become the norm for television to describe all teenagers with the same broad brushstrokes and I felt that teenagers were being pigeonholed together in a way that you would never consider sensible with adults. My intention was to give the viewer a glimpse of a private world that is not only truthful but also I hope optimistic.
"I asked producer Matt Cummings to set up a series of interviews with a broad cross-section of teenagers ranging from thirteen to nineteen. The only rule was that I know nothing about them until we arrived, and had no idea if their bedroom was mansion or a mouse hole. All the teenagers were asked the same twenty questions ranging from 'What scares you' to 'What music do you like', and with a crew of three (including Matt and D.P. Eduardo Trowse) I was able to obtain a relaxed atmosphere.
"Despite assurances from one parent that I should 'bring a bio-hazard suit' I feel privileged to have been allowed into this world and I am continuing to conduct interviews so as to develop the project into a full one hour version."

Ben Unwin

Eduardo

Olly

Semera Khan

Laura Lewis

Dido’s Safe Trip Home films: Don’t Believe In Love

Made on a shoestring, Mo's video for Chipmunk still manages to be a classy-looking little number with a few simple effects, and a scorpion (thrown in, though not literally, for free).
Fortunately, no sign of Alvin whatsoever.

Stein Stie

UNIT

Chipmunk's Beast by Mo

Rosie and pals go wild in the country - Hamatethy Farm in Cornwall, to be exact - in Isaac Rentz's new collab with the band.
Delightful place (the band are from Cornwall) nicely shot by Stein Stie. Rosie's quite the horsewoman, and the drummer's a deadshot with a drumstick.
And you can check out more of Rosie and The Goldbug's glam-pop allure in Isaac's previous video for<a href="http://www.drawpictures.co.uk/young-guns/isaac-rentz.go"> Lover</a>.

Isaac Rentz

Camila Klich

Isaac Rentz[/pay]

Rosie and The Goldbug’s You’ve Changed by Isaac Rentz

Taking a leaf out of Tom Hanks' book in Big, it's David Allain's video for Frankmusik. Of course the budget didn't quite stretch to a giant piano that lights up as you step across it - that'll be a bargain $250,000 of your loose change, according to producer Paul Carter.
It took Paul a while to figure it out - but his dad came to the rescue. "With less than a week's prep, I made a phone call to my dad and he came up with the winning idea," he explains. "We cut each key individually and used plunger microswitches underneath the front edge divided by padded strips to allow give.
"But the spotlights we had originally planned to use were too hot and would've melted the piano. Only when our gaffer Nathan came on board did he make the decision to use simple garden floodlights. These were suitable enough to rig two underneath each piano key.
"It is now a fully working entity, and so much fun that Universal Music have decided to rig it up in their own foyer!"

David Allain

Marcus Domleo

Lindy Anderson

Julian Ganio

Nikki Porter

Adrian Seery

Carmen Montanez Callan

Frankmusik's Three Little Words by David Allain

Nominated in the Best Urban Video category at the MVAs for their excellent and now very huge video for Flobots' Handlebars - 10 million hits on YouTube and counting - here's the new thing from Dirty UK.
Elephant boy and butterfly-cat journey through a Japanese painting to the end of the world (and back), for the first single from Mercury Rev's acclaimed new album. It's dreamy and imaginative - and you can almost feel that rice-paper.

Olly Moss and Andy Brassington of Dirty UK on the making of the video for Mercury Rev's Butterfly Wing
"We wanted to create an entirely animated video based on contemporary Japanese illustration and then make it a bit more psychedelic and strange to fit the mood of the track. For inspiration of strangeness we looked at a picture of Phil Tidy for an hour or so, then just went with the flow.
"Sam Kerridge is a great illustrator who we work with whenever possible - he did all illustrations for our Flobots video - and once we sourced the additional references we let Sam go to town on the drawings.
"It was a lot of fun designing the assets and creating the different scenes for our two heroes, butterfly cat and elephant, to explore. We simply wrote a weird narrative that took our two main characters into as many fantastical and magical places as possible.
"There were no boundaries as to where they could go or what would happen on their journey, which made the whole process a really fun experience. When your two main protagonist are a flying elephant and butterfly cat, there are no rules.
"James and Martin are two fab animators and they had a lot of input with us in the design and animation and were pretty much responsible for their own scenes - they made it very easy for us.
"All the animation was done in After Effects. A great team effort and we are very pleased with the results."

Dirty UK

Phil Tidy

Jason Rackham

Mercury Rev’s Butterfly Wing by Dirty UK

Although it's a bit confusing, him being a Last Shadow Puppet and a Rascal (and their records being around at the same time), here is all the evidence you need that Miles Kane is not hanging on the coattails of his more famous Arctic Monkey mate.
Straight-talking, atmospheric, powerful performance vid (with merest hint of storyline) for a cracking Rascals number by Draw Pics' new boy David Allain - it's excellently lit by Ross Mclennan and finely edited by Darren Baldwin.

David Allain has also just completed a quite different, very graphic pop performance for VV Brown - with animation contributions from Dirty UK.
Good versatile work, young David...

Glassworks

Carmen Montanez

Supple Nam

Cynthia Lawrence

The Rascals and V V Brown by David Allain 

As we all know, gangs are bad, the scourge of society. They are sucking in our kids and making them do awful things. The Kaiser Chiefs recognise this, and they clearly quite worried about the little bastards.
James and Kate from Goodtimes illustrate the problem in their excellent video for the Kaisers' new poptastic tune: so many kids, so many gangs, causing absolute bloody mayhem - especially with their West Side Story-style dancing.
The ones I really don't like are the Cardboard Helmet Crew.

Kate and James of Goodtimes on the making of Kaiser Chiefs' Never Miss A Beat
"The ideas for the video stemmed from the 'call to arms', anthem-like energy of the track. It reminded us of a bizarre 1970s American cycling safety film we saw last year that we loved, in which a troop of kids are bombing around the streets on bikes wearing homemade monkey masks.
"There is also a touch of a homage to the classic film The Warriors, which tells a fast-paced tale of many self-styled gangs chasing across each other's territories in New York.
"We wanted to have a poke at the growing paranoia around adults who no longer identify with the kids in their home towns, and who for the most part are fearing the worst. In the vid we show adults staying indoors watching reports about these unruly kids on the news, as the kids in turn are mobilising their forces to an undetermined end - which results in being a joyful massive dance off!
"The residents of the estates we filmed in were brilliant and really accommodating, and the kids were great. We had a good time filming this one - and the lads in the band were alright too, I guess..."

Goodtimes

David Leighton

Darren Baldwin

Ross Anderson

The Kaiser Chiefs’ Never Miss A Beat by Goodtimes

The Fratellis find themselves trying out their latest in the searing Spanish desert - and then a f***ing* great "F" appears in the sky.
Dirty UK teamed up with Ben Unwin to create the storming performance, and the sub-plot about a couple lost in the desert.
The Dirty boys no doubt handled that f***ing great "F" themselves.

(* 'flaming', of course)

Dirty UK and Ben Unwin

August Jakkobbson

Bob Brimson

Fratellis' Look Out Sunshine by Dirty UK and Ben Unwin

It's Friday night, and the time is right.... Three strippers (two girls, one guy) perform to The Virgins' Private Affair - on Private Affair, a low rent NYC cable TV show so sleazy, and picture quality so exceptionally bad, it's probably for real.
It's a good look - and of course a YouTube hit. And fun fact: The Virgins' lead singer starred in Matt Lenski's first ever video, for <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watchv=G0T-gxtVUzM">Fallout Boy</a>.

Charlie Cocuzza

Ron Egozi

Adam Jenkins

The Virgins’ Private Affair by Matt Lenski

The-Virgins’-Private-Affair-by-Matt-Lenski

The Delays' new video by MICHAEL stars Ewan Macintosh (doomed to be known for a while longer as Keith from The Office) as the overweight chap whose good intentions to pound the streets of Winchmore Hill are shattered by the garish allure of the kebab shop.
But boy, does he pay for his indulgence. Junk food doesn't come out well from this. Kebab shop owners may want a new dish on the menu when they see it: Doner Delays.

MICHAEL

Grant Branton

Stein Sie

Richard Lewis

Sharice Babakhani

Emily Tedrake

The Delays' Keep It Simple by MICHAEL

What happens when two friends take very different paths off the cycle track. 
A powerful allegory, beautifully executed by Olly, Andy and Pete at Dirty UK, for Denver-based hip-hop progressives Flobots.

Olly, Andy, Pete @ DirtyUK

Flobots' Handlebars by Dirty UK

Two contrasting videos from the Fab Two: that's Liverpool's own Goodtimes. First, there's this for Red Light Company which, for the 'Times' James Slater and Kate Sellars, is an unusually performance-orientated piece for the band's hummable With Lights Out. 
And no, that's not the lovely Madonna... 

And there's this for New Zealand's decidedly trippy Ruby Suns, which is so much more weird...
"It's quite odd," agrees James. "Once again all the characters live on my street. They all were up for idea of dressing up for a day." Indeed, who wouldn't want to wear a zebra head
Quite bonkers. But not only that, it works in 3D - quite possibly by accident. So check it out with the old-style glasses, that you might still have from the last BUG (or in my case, from the DVD of Spy Kids 3: Game Over guest starring Sly Stallone). 
It really does work...

Emily Lansley/Goodtimes

James Sl

Dan Millar

Kwok Yau

Double bubble: Red Light Company and Ruby Suns by Goodtimes

It's Amy Mac and co. live across Scandinavia, and closer to home. 
The Prongs shot the band in Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm, and also in Troon, Scotland, where Phil Tidy allegedly OD'd on Irn Bru...

3 Pronged Attack

Prongs 
Editor

Dan Curwin

Amy Macdonald's Poison Prince by 3 Pronged Attack

Draw's animation outfit Dirty UK - currently on a big CGI job for US outfit Flobots - have made this welcome diversion into some old-fashioned live action optical-type effects for Shortwave Set: it's colourful, it's psychedelic, it's bloody messy. 
Don't they say never work with kids, animals and runny paint

Andy Brassington

Ollie Moss

John Moule

Shortwave Set's No Social by Dirty UK

Ben Rollason made a tremendous performance-based video for Blood Red Shoes towards the end of last year for I Wish I Was Someone Better which we somehow neglected to post up onto PromoNews. 
Now he's made a new one for the same band, and we weren't about to make the same mistake. Say Something Say Anything has a different kind of intensity as that first video, unapologetically addressing a near-taboo subject: the nature of grief.

Ben Rollason

Matt Cummins

Becky Harvey

Mercury Records

Blood Red Shoes' Say Something Say Anything by Ben Rollason

Goodtimes's James Slater has been recently jetting between the US and Liverpool, and directed the new Bravery video in the States. But this comes from closer to home, for one of those bands that Liverpool has been producing since time immemorial, which sound a bit Bunnymen, a bit Inspiral Carpets, etc, etc...
And James and partner Kate Sellars' latest is a combination of moodily-shot band footage, voodoo, sex nostalgia and other stuff that looks old but, knowing Goodtimes, they probably filmed themselves. 
It's a low-budget affair of course. Okay, what isn't these days, but I'm told on the highest authority that this was lit by a £15 disco ball from Argos and shot on an old VHS camcorder - just like in Be Kind Rewind. Think someone is possibly pulling my leg

Gavin Wood

Alan Wills

The Rascals’ Suspicious Wit by Goodtimes

Tom Baxter&#39;s new single has a Latin flavour which builds to an intense climax- and that&#39;s exactly reflected in Rupert Jones&#39;s consummately well-made video.It&#39;s dramatic, cinematic, blessed with proper Flamenco dancing to counterpoint the finely-realised performance - and like Rupert&#39;s last video for The Hoosiers, there&#39;s lots of floorboard action.

Rupert Jones

Denzil Armour Brown

Lou Corcoran

The Mill

Jane Skinner

Tom Baxter's Tell Her Today by Rupert Jones

Picture the scene: it&#39;s 18th century France, and the peasants are revolting. Fortunately the working girls are different class.Yes, it&#39;s Girls Aloud, with an unexpected stab at historical verisimilitude. Check out those authentic pre-revolutionary undergarments. It&#39;s all extremely educational - and isn&#39;t Cheryl holding up well

Patrick Holtkamp

Adam Frisch

Nabil Mechi, LA

Girls Aloud's Can't Speak French by Petro

Girls-Aloud's-Can't-Speak-French-by-Petro

Last week we had Karni + Saul's video for Turin Brakes' Something In My Eye. Now here's the second current video for the balladeering Brakes - also with a decidely melancholic air - from Shelly Love. 
Little monsters are playing cowboys and indians down in Epping Forest, and being a bit too realistic. But the photography, by Stein Sie, is lovely.

Shelly Love

Ioanna Karavela

Nigel Howlett

Oliver Garcia

Ben Macoy

Turin Brakes 2: Dark On Fire by Shelly Love

This lovely young couple are going to have the time of their lives tonight - until it all goes horribly wrong. 
The 3 Pronged Attack (that's Phil Clyde-Smith, Jonty Kenyon and Andy Hui) somehow manage to find the comedy in this tragic episode.

The 3 Pronged Attack

Phil Clyde

Jolene Farmer

Dan Bowen &amp; Dick Green

The Cribs' I'm A Realist by The 3 Pronged Attack

Following those outrageous fantasies by Diamond Dogs, Rupert Jones supervises some serious cabin fever for The Hoosiers' third single.

Hoosiers' Worst Case Scenario by Rupert Jones

Shelly Love puts her serious chops in modern dance and choreography to good use here for the remix of the Lloyds Bank theme. Good stuff, and of course it also brings back fond memories of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watchv=q25Zx6B5HJA&amp;feature=related" _blank="">this</a>.

CJ Hassay for Positiva

Mark Brown's The Journey Continues by Shelly Love

Mark-Brown's-The-Journey-Continues-by-Shelly-Love

Promonews Podcast

Draw Pictures

Production Company

Videos featuring Draw Pictures

2015 (1)

2011 (1)

2009 (1)

2008 (23)

Popular content

Is this your profile?

Feedback

Latest Videos