VFX Producer

Hannah Ruddleston

Francois Rousselet reunites with The Rolling Stones, for Angry - their first new music in 17 years - to bring the billboards of Sunset Boulevard brilliantly to life with decades of Stones' iconography.Sidney Sweeney plays the 'rock chick' who is having the time of her life, cruising the strip in a vintage Mercedes SL, past those iconic billboards.&nbsp;But the main business of the video, the real star of the show,&nbsp;are the billboards themselves - beautifully designed, crafted and wonderfully executed with outstandingly creative VFX work by the team at Black Kite Studios in London. The most iconic moments of the career of the Stones - six decades of material - come to life in a video for what turns out to be a properly good new Stones track.[imgtoken data:1]Although the eye-catching billboards have almost all disappeared today - they started as hand-painted boards in the early days of Hollywood and then became part of the burgeoning rock billboard scene in the 1960s&nbsp;- the locations have not changed.Rousselet designed the Stones' billboards himself - all 109 of them. Then Black Kite's VFX Supervisor George Brunt, on-set VFX Supervisor Jonny&nbsp;Freeman and senior&nbsp;colourist&nbsp;Richard Fearon&nbsp;were tasked with putting them back on Sunset Boulevard, so they appear from the point of view of the car in which Sidney Sweeney is travelling.[imgtoken data:2]“We took iconic archive footage of the band and used traditional comping and 2D and 3D roto methods to work the moving footage into each poster," says George Brunt, explaining&nbsp;the brief that they were given by Rousselet - who has worked with the Stones before, on the 2016 video for <a href="https://www.promonews.tv/videos/2016/12/02/rolling-stones-ride-%E2%80%98em-down-francois-rousselet/45023" target="_blank">Ride Em On Down</a>, starring Kristin Stewart.As well as the archive footage,&nbsp;there was also new live footage to reflect every stage of the band, with the lyrics of Angry as part of the composition of each billboard. Brunt says that a variety of tools were employed in order for the Stones' performance of Angry to come to life with the vintage footage.[imgtoken data:3]“The lyrics of the track were matched to the footage using a combination of&nbsp;lip-syncing and AI," he says. "We used 3D&nbsp;lighting to match the plates and replicate the quality and sheen of a classic billboard.&nbsp;The end result had to look slick, and working with different resolution types is challenging.&nbsp;The devil really is in the detail with this type of work but slick it looks and we love it.”Jonny Freeman was on set for Black Kite, the one day shoot took place on Sunset Boulevard with a camera on the hero car, the team in a truck behind and LA police escorts in front and behind the action to keep the famous street clear.&nbsp;The camera was placed from the point of view of Sydney Sweeney to recreate the sensation of moving among the flow of the billboards on the Strip with the rock icons appearing larger than life the whole way.[imgtoken data:4]"It was essential to get the lighting just right for the VFX team back at the studio," says Freeman. "I went on a tech scout the week before and shot lighting reference images to make sure we had additional light passes to help bed in compositions in the final film."Black Kite’s Rich Fearon, a long time collaborator of Rousselet, was in charge of the grade. The promo was shot on 35mm film, with Christopher Ripley as DOP, and this really enhanced the edgy LA look.&nbsp;“This grade was all about bringing out the brilliant LA light with a lot of contrast in the rich colour, whilst keeping the gritty texture of the film," says Fearon. “It’s always a pleasure to work with Francois and this time was almost an extension of the last Stones’ promo we worked on together, for&nbsp;Ride ‘Em on Down."I almost instinctively knew what he wanted and this was apparent when he saw the first pass and loved it!”

United Kingdom

Harriet Cawley

Molly Dickson

Francois Rousselet

Jane Tredget

Josh Sondock

Hands 

Riff Raff Films

Semera Khan

Chris Ripley 

Matthew Fone

Brooke Eliot

Josh Montes

Matt Planer

Glen Coco

Patrick Ta

Dominic Leung

Marsheen

Richard Fearon

Black Kite Studios

Abi Klimaszewska

Jonny Freeman

George Brunt

Sydney Sweeney

Polydor

Rock

The Rolling Stones 'Angry' by Francois Rousselet

The Rolling Stones - Angry (Official Video)

Ella Eyre is all jewels and fur in the ultra-pink, candy-coated visual directed by Sophia Ray for the new single Ego. She&rsquo;s joined by Ty Dolla $ign and a seriously hunky model who seems to like himself a bit too much - making it a pure pop confection with a positive message for the girls. &nbsp;

Sophia Ray

Richard Wilson

Partizan

Claire Stubbs

Mayling Wong

Chris Malin

Matthew Emvin Taylor

Robin Webster

Mahalia John

Julian White

Zach Apo-tsang

Daisy Deane

Yasmina Bentaieb

Ben Harrex

Final Cut

Jonny Tully

Mirrors

Smoke

Nineteen-twenty

Amck Dance

James Hackett

Virgin EMI

Ella Eyre ft Ty Dolla $ign 'Ego' by Sophia Ray

Ella-Eyre-Ft-Ty-Dolla-$ign-'Ego'-by-Sophia-Ray

After their excellent videos for the likes of LarzRanda and <a href="http://www.promonews.tv/videos/2015/09/10/sheep-dog-wolf-breathe-thunderlips" target="_blank">Sheep, Dog &amp; Wolf</a>&nbsp;in New Zealand,&nbsp;Auckland-based directing duo&nbsp;Jordan Dodson&nbsp;and Sean Wallace - aka THUNDERLIPS &ndash; make an impressive first British video for the returning Two Door Cinema Club. It&nbsp;is&nbsp;a thing of grotesque, slightly&nbsp;bewildering beauty.In the the video for Are We Ready? (Wreck) video, the&nbsp;three members of&nbsp;TDCC&nbsp;are all noxiously cheesy spokesmen&nbsp;for a series of terrible ads for&nbsp;brands with names corresponding to the song&#39;s lyrics.&nbsp;Two of them have been luridly&nbsp;transformed,&nbsp;by Melissa Lackersteen&#39;s makeup job,&nbsp;into puffy-faced, surgery-enhanced&nbsp;versions of themselves. But there&#39;s a battle going on between this artificiality and reality underneath, expressed through lead singer Alex Trimble&#39;s angst and&nbsp;slowly disintegrating face.It&#39;s visually arresting and&nbsp;audacious, and after a couple of views (maybe trying to figure it out what&#39;s going on), another catchy TDCC song will be stuck in your brain.&nbsp;&nbsp;

THUNDERLIPS

Rupert Savage

Good Egg

John Hassay

Joshua Carter

Tibo Travers

James Blann

Chris Pollitt

Jomar O'Meally

Cat Velez

Nick Leishman

Felix Coles

Adele Can

Melissa Lackersteen

Brooke Nielson

Sam Seager

Lee Watson

Two Door Cinema Club 'Are We Ready? (Wreck)' by THUNDERLIPS

Two Door Cinema Club - Are We Ready? (Wreck) [Official Video]

Can it be? A music video by Dougal Wilson? It is, and a delightful&nbsp;one at that.The video is for&nbsp;Liverpudlian&nbsp;electronic-pop&nbsp;trio Stealing Sheep&#39;s track Apparition,&nbsp;and sees the artists themselves performing&nbsp;a choreography amongst a troupe of Morris dancers, handkerchief in hand.Dougal tells&nbsp;<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2015/oct/07/stealing-sheep-watch-their-new-video-for-apparation" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>, &ldquo;The idea for Apparition came from the fact that the song had a mysterious, hypnotic feeling, and the fact that I&rsquo;ve always found Morris dancing slightly strange and psychedelic.&rdquo;&nbsp;Wilson had&nbsp;been wanting to revisit the English folk dance since his video for&nbsp;Four Tet&#39;s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fwbn_sKCVRo" target="_blank">As Serious As Your Life</a>&nbsp;-&nbsp;a mashup of Morris dance clips set to the rythm of the music -&nbsp;done in&nbsp;2003.&nbsp;He goes on to explain, &quot;Since then, I&rsquo;d always wanted to take the idea further by actually having a band learn Morris dancing themselves, and this seemed like an appropriate opportunity given the unexpected contrast of the girls&rsquo; personalities with the characters in a genuine Morris side.&quot;

Hannah Ruddleston

VFX Producer

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