To launch the new music service Virgin Digital, creatives at Ground Zero, Los Angeles, partnered with design/directing collective National Television to encourage people to “Exercise Their Music Muscle.” Though National Television is a collective, the members—Chris Dooley, Brumby Boylston and Brian Won who serve as co-creative directors and Steiner Kierce who is head of production–run their own shop in Los Angeles where they work as designers, directors and animators.
For the short film on www.VirginDigital.com, National Television designed a narrative made up of well-known song titles. For example, in the opening sequence of the animated video, the letter “I” shoots a sheriff (“I Shot the Sheriff”) and the soul of the sheriff ascends in to heaven. Up in the clouds there is an eye (“Eye in the Sky”) that cries tears (“Tears in Heaven”), which fall to the ground as “Purple Rain.” The action continues, but part of the fun of the clip is figuring out the songs based on the illustrations.
Art director Rodrigo Butori explained that Virgin Digital offers more than just music; they also offer in-depth information about artists including biographies and links to musicians who influenced one another. The service is designed for music junkies and the idea behind the video is to challenge those music enthusiasts.
When the agency approached National Television with the project, the creatives had a list of songs in place. Of course, all of the songs had to be part of the Virgin Digital library.
With a substantial amount of songs–the final official count is 35–the agency wanted to “show the breadth that you would get from this Virgin Digital music service,” Dooley shared. From there, it was up to National Television to develop the aesthetic and a seamless presentation.
“To link one song to the other and get an interesting narrative was a big, big challenge,” Butori said. “And the people who probably had the most headaches were the guys at National Television because this was probably a really hard thing to animate, we were so picky.” He went on to say it had to “work as one solid piece and not feel like a bunch of images attached with no feeling or sense of continuity.”
Once the collective began designing the video, Dooley compared it to a house of cards since each element was dependent on the next. “It became this delicate thing we were working with where you couldn’t move one thing without replacing it with something sort of equal or something that was going to take you to the next thing,” he remarked.
TIMELESSNESS
To create the imagery, the designers began by building frames in Photoshop and using them as a road map. From there, they figured out how to create each element and, Dooley explained, the biggest feat was creating the whole thing in After Effects with a 2D compositing program. Boylston added that after the characters were illustrated, they created the individual character animation, separate from the backgrounds, and then composited the two elements together.
It was important to the design team to create a style that wouldn’t tie into a specific era of music since the song references in the video span six decades of music. Of the overall aesthetic, Dooley described the style as Victorian collage while Butori suggested it also has watercolor qualities.
Boylston pointed out that the style provides an element of surprise. “You don’t really associate this illustration style with current popular music,” he said. “If we were to have done this with current style illustrations or something that would seem trendy, then it might maroon this thing into being only read by a certain group of people.”
Though this entire project is about music, finding the right music to propel the action proved to be somewhat difficult. Eventually “Sing Sing” by Serena Ryder was selected.
“The Serena Ryder song was a really big challenge for us to find,” Butori said. “We were looking at music that would somehow talk about music in a very interesting way so we went through like Carpenters ‘Sing (Sing a Song)’ to ‘Pumping on Your Stereo’ from Supergrass and then we ended up with Serena Ryder, which we felt was a really strong voice that could easily be a theme for Virgin Digital.”
Additionally, Boylston noted that “Sing Sing” was an ideal fit for the visually oriented clip because the lyrics in the percussion-driven song don’t interfere with the story that unfolds on the screen.
Ground Zero also created print ads for the campaign, which are driving traffic to the site. And the clip can be sent to a friend from the Web site.
According to National Television, the aforementioned Won should also be credited as the designer on the spot while Boylston was also a 2D animator. Additional credit for the production through National Television goes to the following freelancers: Wonhee Lee, Kevin Walker and John Nguyen, 3D animators; Nguyen and Camille Chu, 2D animators; and Ben Lee, for additional illustrations.
At Ground Zero credit goes to Court Crandall, creative director; Kristina Slade, copywriter; and AnneKatherine Friis, producer.